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CREATIVE YO 


Flow a School Environment Set Cfree 
the (reative @Spirit 


BY, 
HUGHES MEARNS 


With a Foreword by 
Oris W. CALDWELL 


and an Anthology of the High School Verse 


EDUCATIONAL EDITION 


GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 
DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC. 





COPYRIGHT, I925, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE 
& COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE 
COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY; N. Y. 


THIRD PRINTING 


A0f@) 


HE CL ANS SO: Bit) 100215 
LINCOLN SCHOOL 


WHO BEGAN THIS VOLUME 
FIVE YEARS AGO 


GRANVILLE BARKER: . . . J remember a 
phrase in a little book you wrote many years ago: 
“We never learn anything that we did not know 


before.” 


Moore: Meaning thereby that a man cannot 
be taught. But though he cannot be taught, he can 
learn, meaning thereby that he may discover a self 
within himself. 


— Georce Moore, “Conversations in Ebury Street” 


And the touch of absent-mindedness is more than 
any line, 

Since direction counts for nothing when the gods 
Set up a sign. 


— NaTHALIA Crane, “The Janitor’s Boy, 
and Other Poems” 






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FOREWORD 


It has long been customary to speak of language as a 
vehicle for thought. This vehicular figure has too commonly 
been accepted as an indistinctly outlined structure on wheels, 
possibly moving, possibly standing still. Vehicles vary 
widely, however. There are heavy, jolting, rattling log 
wagons, freight cars, road trucks, and the noisy motor- 
cycles; and there are noiseless bicycles, shockless motors for 
pleasure, health, and long-distance travel; and aeroplanes 
successfully inviting venturesome persons to express them- 
selves, so to speak, by way of the air. 

We cannot adequately consider this figure as applied to 
language without thought of the materials transferred by these 
vehicles. Sometimes the commodities are heavy freight in 
rough strong boxes, or even unpacked pieces like bars of pig 
iron, or heavy logs cut from strong forest trees; sometimes 
highly refined results of many processes of modern industry 
like precious chemicals, or highly polished lenses, or the fine 
dependable tools of modern surgery; sometimes paintings, 
or music, or books conveying the finest emotions of human 
beings. In language-conveyance as in that of public high- 
ways the vehicles are useless except as they carry appro- 
priate and worthwhile burdens. 

Too often instruction in English has devoted its time 
largely to construction and refinement of the means of con- 
veying thought, and not enough to the loads to be carried. 
Such a procedure fails to take account of one of the truest 
discoveries of modern education. It is that young people 
best construct and refine their forms for doing their work 
when they are clear as to why things should be done. It isn’t 


vu 


vill FOREWORD 


a question whether students may be well-trained in English, 
then set to work to use it, but, rather, whether they will be 
trained whenever the occasion for training may arise. The 
first method does not operate effectively; the second one does. 

In the field of literature, to which this volume is devoted, 
certain outstanding facts may be noted as they have ap- 
peared in American education. Almost everyone believes 
in teaching literature to high-school pupils. Almost no one 
is convinced that we have succeeded in doing this with any- 
thing like satisfactory outcomes in enjoyment and apprecia- 
tion of good literature. We have drilled, memorized, ana- 
lyzed, dissected, and philosophized upon and within the 
‘world’s best literature.’ At the end we have often found 
our pupils examinable regarding certain standard selections» 
but mechanically unsympathetic with them; and there was no 
burning fire within driving them toward endeavors to shape 
their own reflections and buoyant visions into forms worthy 
of record in print. In literature, as in some other subjects, 
we have regarded pupils as learners, not prophetic doers, 
and have sought to instruct them, and have not tried to lead 
them to create. We have not really be ieved that all good 
pieces of literature are exponents of creative spirits and can 
be fully sensed only by those who view them from the angles 
of creation. We need to recognize that many, possibly most, 
pupils are essentially creative, but that our systems of educa- 
tion have forced adult standards and judgments until timid- 
ity regarding one’s own writing has too often supplanted the 
naturally adventurous spirit of those who really wish, and 
very often slyly endeavor, to express themselves in verse 
and prose. They cannot truly enter into the world’s litera- 
ture except by their own endeavors to write; then in this 
trying, some reveal to themselves and to us the unmistakable 
evidences of the new writers of our own day. 

For five years we have watched with fascination as a 
group of high-school pupils slowly have come to understand 


FOREWORD 1x 


that poetry by pupils is really respectable. The shyly sub- 
mitted rhyme which in bygone days, even still in many 
places, is falsely regarded as evidence of weak emotion is 
slowly assuming the dignity of real production. It maynowbe 
copied upon blackboard, discussed, improved, its rules and 
principles deducted almost as would be done with a demonstra- 
tion in geometry or a report uponatopic in history. Further- 
more, one piece of work so done serves as an opening pass key 
to many a door of literature which for many pupils has re- 
mained locked within library books. Literature may be and 
is studied objectively as is true in other school studies; it is 
not wholly a subjective emotional experience. But personal 
experience is essential to objective consideration. ‘Then, real 
quality and style must work out of and not be built artifi- 
cially upon the true experiences and efforts of young writers. 
Young people must understand that there are some well- 
established rules of practice. The sprightly and superficial 
enthusiast who wrote 


Oh, Spring! Beautiful Spring! 
Thou comest in the Springtime of the Year, 


was merely using meaningless freedom—notwithstanding the 
essential correctness of the observation which she thus re- 
cords. The best poems in this collection were in most cases 
written and many times rewritten before they reached their 
present form and content. 

The studies herein described present the basis for a new 
hope for and faith in the young people of our modern day. 
It is usual now to hear comments about the rashness and 
foolhardiness of our youth. Each age has suffered this de- 
lusion regarding its youth, mistaking the true signs of prog- 
ress as lack of steadfastness. Of course the new generation 
is different. If our memories are faithful regarding the 
time when we were the youth, we surely wish the new genera- 


x FOREWORD 


tion to be different from that of our day. Youth may try 
some dangerous experiments. Our generation did so. We 
need to recall, also, that new things, just because they are 
new, do not always have definite rules of procedure. This ab- 
sence of adequate rules for new things must involve some 
measure of wastage during the period when discovery is in 
progress. So long as youth is essentially serious as it now 
is, and so long as young people really desire the good of one 
another as they do, even more I believe, than ever before, 
they are to be trusted in their thinking and in their writing. 
This trust must not be a half-hearted trust, but must be an 
actively sympathetic confidence. These youth are the next 
generation which shall inherit the earth. 

Reading the writings which follow will surely give a large 
measure of new hope to all those older folk who have retained 
plasticity and educability. 

Oris W. CaLpwELL. 


(The Roman numeral after the name indicates the school grade of the 


SUNRISE Katharine Kosmak, IX 
BLossoms Valerie Frankel, X 
PRINCESSES . Emma Rounds, X 
WIND IN APRIL Eleanor Barnes, XI 
MEETING E. F. M., XI 


Rep MaGNoLias 
Ciry Nicuts 

THe Heap HuntTER 
THE AFTERGLOW 


CONTENTS 


A SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT FOR 
CREATIVE WRITING 


PuRPOSE 
THE CREATIVE cat A Coreen 


ILLUSTRATION OF METHOD IN CERTAIN Poe: 


How WeE BeEcGaAn 

Tue Non-PoretT AND THE Se at 
SELF-EXPRESSION THROUGHOUT THE SCHOOL 
THE CLassRooM ENVIRONMENT 
LITERARY JUDGMENT 

CREATIVE READING 

UNSUPERVISED READING 

THe ScHoot LiBRaRyY . 

CREATIVE PROSE ; 

Tue LIranies oF YOUTH . 
TRADITION AND THE NEXT STEP. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1920-1923 


writer in the year when the production was made) 


xi 


Katharine Kosmak, X 
James Flexner, VIII 
William Sargent, 1X 

Beatrice Wadhams, VII 


xil CONTENTS 


ROAD WAVIL ta Rea Rah abe le ner onae Tom Prideaux, IX 
CEOLD IMME HSMN Hat ieubc teh (SNC My Katharine Kosmak, X 
Fire PicrurReEs ais ‘ Emma Rounds, VIII 
A SoNnG FOR CLEMENT Moone . . Charlotte Bayne, 1X 
LACPOINTERUUVRAZ ine pie Eleanor Flexner, [1X 
Tue SEeELF-DECEIVERS i slide! slab atharine & Osmanpe. 
Tue Pixie Moment . . . ... Katharine Kosmak, X 
A FLower REVERIE . . « Beatrice Wadhams, 1X 
11D Je Sica ak ER RARER fone SAG) ced hl EAB) Virginia Voris, 1X 
NocTURNE BY i hes James Flexner, X 
THe WIND Is A CeeeEEEe . Katharine Kosmak, VII 
NHADOWS) Ns CUNT gece Lena tamens 
FoRSYTHIA .. bat) bw atharine Nosmak ar LLL 
Just BEFORE Tienes it: Beatrice Wadhamsn telus 
DELPHINE . . enn Beatrice Wadhams, IX 
Ciry TREES Rees aie Rat Mase os Emma Rounds, X 
(RHEIGRASPING LY EAN eae Frederica P. Pisek, XII 
TLARBORTOONG Yt dee nl oA ent EOP MS XOEB 
Ups PROMAUNDERSEAW no ee NAnLeS Sargent, VII 
DEEPEST VIVSTERTES Ricco) it) nhhe yen aye lianas fat Foto Feet 
Curep: A Bepsip—E PomrmM .. . Ae unas pay Ouva o &,"° 
In THE Hours oF DaRKNESS . . Nypiees Ree IX 
NVIND (OF UDAWN oi) tie eo uryen aa Wynne Fairfield, XII 
PHANTOMS .. TE SOC er) ian mn ON Oud Sop 
THE Opium Bae sen GUNS DU YT oi Tom Prideaux, IX 
SKIP-SCOOP-ANELLIE| , 6... The Lincoln Imp. IX 
POORVEUSSY= VW ILLOWSaiii te ei ae Pixie Rain, 1X 
(PHEW DPOLLERS ams Laure Emma Rounds, IX 
THE BALLAD OF A Palrosornnns Picnio/ ia TS ele 
On’ His (KINDNESS). 4 i i PaullAd Hereog, XI 


ON THE ImITATIONS oF WorRDSWORTH IN EaRLy CHILDHOOD 
Emma Rounds, X 


THe Door Stanps OPEN . . . Wynne Fairfield, XII 
LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 
PRELUDE Gare ea Pes ea alge Me aan as Ella Fohs, XI 
SPRING VENDERS 9.) 7.0). * of d08 2.4 o) Lomi Prideauxi nx. 
WILDFLOWER clan a Ha eh _ Beatrice Wadhams, XI 


PAGE 
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CONTENTS 


IEOONIAVLADNESSits Wifey! (sh ak Zara Moxham, X 
INTIMATIONS .. Vin re sly ply OtNaH ALL 
Down THE NIGHTS AND Down THE Days 

James Flexner, XI 


Tue Patu » » « « «  « Alwin Pappenheimer, XI 
INESENCE lia. A Teen ap. Virginia Voris, XI 
THE Poot oF Lsrae Con un ALLE De) OTAAN gs ALL 
PIR STEONOWAIN? Wied (at got ada Dealiice Jy aahamsnl | 
OMSIDHEPHERD 09) 10051) ( 2 worlbyalis ued argarer Mayo, 11 
PMWILIGHT hou Lilt aN Na Eleanor Barnes, XII 
WEARY OF Mesnce SERA Gl LMR LOUESe LLCtGLd co NaNO 
To Timmy pr Abt de! foe es ot ae ASANO eae ek GF A 
VIE DATEC Shaner AO entire periat W. Hap Mae XI 
CLOCKMAKER’S Rane . . . . Katharine Kosmak, XII 
OU RMNVLIOON ea veer. Louise Burton Laidlaw, XII 
LPO ERE. 1 de eco at Pe Deri A ALD ene Lp 
MR ORM Siuke bs etl eel hae bed Inet Rand, XII 
BMOUTH St HYVES fi.) ) AN Aah Zara Moxham, X 
You STAND ON A MOUNTAIN . Katharine Kosmak, XI 
In a Rattway StaTION . .. .. . Eleanor Barnes, XII 
(GREEND JANUARY (irs-.0) ay 1 2 Katharine Kosmar, xX] 
Tue Ecotist in His OrcHarRD. . Tom Prideaux, XI 


SOME AND OTHERS AT THE PRIVATE VIEW 
Philip Jordan, XII 


PA SSIAMAVV.OCD Mer a) Uy A TENUT BUMOmarN 1 
Frencw Minuet . . . . .. Beatrice Wadhams, XII 
WPHEMSUN-SHUNNERG\UoWa loi. cu) Solas Tom Prideaux, XI 
HERE WORKS. Ween at Pst eats ; Tom Prideaux, XI 
PIBCEMBER AI Wu Wiiche ye Lyiy ok insonaeren Vanderbilt, XI 
Nature Notes: |.) Se he Emma Rounds, XI 


To Jutta, CAUTIONING ee AGaNer InNFEcTIOUS DISEASES 
Emma Rounds, XI 


BETTIRASTR OU Shire Vice ty heey nrg Uru, Tom Prideaux, X 
THE Moron THUBNS lan eine ar ike RMR ROUnaS OL 
PEROBICS UMM neue tli berg aus iain yeni Tom Prideaux, X 
WOR LM OALES 4 wiht Bee Ue, Emma Rounds, XI 
On My Lapy’s Fase .. 1, Hope Spingarn, XII 
Ursan TRANSPORTATION SONGS  . Emma Rounds, XI 


xiii 
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XIV CONTENTS 


HE Dips (oO ae Pauline Raernold Mii 
MOONE er ACO UML ial sa a TA Tom Prideaux, X 
Our) THERE YOU NA Stephen Duaran meh 
Tue Beauty or HER . . . «Ss Alice Habberton, XI 


SVANG shay nOtChe Ah Voie Tuten Zora Head, XI 
SEASONAL eaters iat Lethe ge Lincoln Reis, XI 
RUIN Ga te ee Wig SOL oem SN Ella Fohs, XI 
Tue Nortu eae. Nene : Lincoln Reis, XI 


THE LAND oF THincs ForRGoTTEN 

Anne Pappenheimer, VIII 
THe CALL oF THE AIR Gholson Kittredge, VIII 
Tirep WaTER . . . « «Anne Pappenheimer, VIII 


WLINSELs nies eile 4s) 3 Beatrice Wadhams Dorr 
CAVALIER’S Dee site TS Sie Aline: Weeksler sia 
SEA-Gops , . : Wilma Roelofsma, XI 


Axis, KING OF Reve s oun eH Samuel Lynch, 1X 


Poet) 


RAIN-RIDING/ Ce Atte a a Mary Rumely, VII 
DONG Ws Ua teh nN UN anEEN US NOMAD? 7 Pag 2 TY adhams, XII 
O SAILORS Fee iene nh ean ced Toray Wechsler, IX 
EULLABY G0 ie - . Priscilla Wadhams, VIII 
‘THE BLACKFEET OF PLMGNTANe - + Walliam Sargent, 1X 
SOME Day, Mayse . . . . Priscilla W adhams, VIII 
Ou, FisHMan, Sweet FIsHMAN. . John Croly, VIII 
INEW GY EARSiv ii enh ane os ane mM Coreg Kronthal, IX 
MORNING Ray Eel tie een oT 73 Swan, VIT 
PITEOUS, EYES) aa iummmy ee leat Mary Spurrier, VIII 
DHE* BARN-SWALLOW) Su) bel aia liiam Sargent, XI 
BizaRRE .. - . Anne Pappenheimer, VIII 
Our Lapy OF THE Shiga .. Eleanor Flexner, X 
PEOPLE? 3a aWi'J= ataluwenlevate MERILEDS) Orne n maTe 
We MEET verges BSNS SLL 4 Tom Prideaux, XI 
ANCHORITE . . A a ON cde Vanderbilt, XI 
On CERTAIN Evera - «++ .. Katharine Kosmak, XI | 
COQUETTE eel ieta mi enugen Sooue i iain Zora Head, XI 
SOPHOMORE he hee ear a Uh ae Zora Head, XI 
At KENILWoRTH ., . Louise Laidlaw, XII 4 


THosE Tuincs THAT Gnee Tare Pie Us Happiness 


Arthur E, Bestor, Jr., XT\ 


CONTENTS 


THe GALLEY-PRroor oF THE PoETic PUDDING 
Emma Rounds, XI 
CANE G GEOMETRY chile a ree es Emma Rounds, XI 


HIGNORS Vs ae i ee eae ea ttD) ofaans Xd L 
NVALDOVWHITMAN Gh uate L ol etieiee eon Lincoln Reis, XI 
Jazz, TINTER OF SOULS ULM ames lh icaner, x 1 
LINCOLN ee. UAe gr SepUla en ade Aline Wechsler, 1X 
CONTENT ON A Bie Gis tits, : Zara Moxham, XI 
LANTERNS ... None. cast Ree Vanderbilt, XI 


CuristMaAs AFTER THANKSGIVING Katharine Kosmak, XI 
WuHuen I Was Very Younc' .._ Katharine Kosmak, XII 


PI REPANATIONSS Oe hy cal. ween MRL ICN CH ILELLIN NE 
(SONFESSIUNAL G1, i, ne ule LAID en OTdane. in 
JAE OE 200) Malo 5) Naha aS UR at ape Wilma Roelofsma, XI 
ATIEN TAMU MTC es tied: Vahuliebnr aki: Ella Fohs, XI 


VA EDV HET Eh RNS, Me tit Mr RR Wilma Roelofsma, XI 
EET A Teer coh cuatoees iret os thy Charles Liebman, Jr., XI 
ERIC UEREGt ou aman rs rete ls Sanderson Vanderbilt, XI 


SE CCOURN bes | 2 ide Arihur Bullowa, XP 
A BALLAD OF Dene Moon . . Aline Wechsler, 1X 
PUHERLIILUS He. chet . . « William Sargent, XI 
Tue Dark Hours oF THE NIGHT . Zara Moxham, XI 
OOUE waves) \ Tava Wilma Roelofsma, XI 
QUEEN OF THE IPONDY, Sy Sanderson Vanderbilt, XI 
REEDED AM talon rete sb hte tea Wey wean tg Zora Head, XI 
WWIND=VWOLVES Ve.) foe Veoh fi brcl ns) 1 WY CLM sareent, AL 
INOW Hic. er ich Arthur E. Bestor, Jr.. XI 
THE Four-Master LEN eu eee Rite) Ofdan we thn 
SVEN Laan meer uv ur casa ent ty EE James Flexner, XI 
HEAVEN. . COantsuete: Anne Pappenheimer, 1X 
Two Sonesta ts ON THE THEATRE . Tom Prideaux, XI 
RAVER Mem rie Min ces ulema LOMESULLCXNET ACCA Lb 
FIORTZONTALUY act rete ok trad ean Tom Prideaux, XI 


DORLONGIME Ma shirali Wenn si eMireiine MIN) GITES LICK ILETS UA Lit 


XxV 


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CREATIVE YOUTH 


I. Purpose 


JupcEs have assured us that the poems in this volume have 
merit. When a portion of Tom Prideaux’s Circus! was read 
before the New York Art Club at one of its annual Authors’ 
Nights, William Rose Benet shouldered through the audi- 
ence to demand further particulars about the poet and to 
read for himself the description of the acrobats in glittering 
regalia careening at their dizzy heights “like birds among the 
jungles of adream.”’ Amid the clamor of voices all about us 
he read the concluding lines: 


Then bowing when their lauded act is ended 
And tossing kisses, jaunty and so glib, 

‘I wonder if they really comprehended 
They’ve tickled Death along his bony rib! 


“That makes the small hairs rise on the back of my neck,” 
he said warmly; “and I always know it’s a good poem when 
the small hairs rise on the back of my neck!’ If Professor 
William Lyon Phelps had been present he might have 
offered the test of “that unmistakable spinal chill” which 
first announces to him a bit of literary art. ' 

Our own sure sign is a rush of animation that sets us 
chattering and gesticulating, like the sudden loosening effect 
of the wine of yesteryear. Without admitting the value of 
these esthetic criteria, we have evidence from many sources 
that this group of poems by high-school pupils has attracted 
more than usual attention. As the verses appeared month 

1See page 184. 





ee 


2 CREATIVE YOUTH 


by month in the school magazine, Lincoln Lore, recognition 
of their interesting quality came from all sides: from college 
classes, from editors and professors, from parents, from 
children in other schools, and from teachers and educational 
administrators generally. In two years the magazine was 
included in that select list The Yearbook of American Poetry; 
but perhaps the crowning recognition was the selection of 
a Lincoln Lore poem for publication in Braithwaite’s 4n- 
thology, an honor that for poets has come to take on some- 
thing of the nature of an annual national award. With that 
poem Sunrise, by Katharine Kosmak, we appropriately 
opened our first collection of Lincoln School verse and 
prose,” the poetic portion of which we republish here as Part I 
of the anthology. 

It interests us, of course, that the work of these high-school 
students should have been received so well and that some of 
their poems should have been considered worthy of a place 
among the best contemporary American poetry, but our 
object has never been to produce the exceptional. We are 
not primarily interested in making poets or even in making 
writers;? our purpose has been simply to set up such an 
environment as might extend further the possibilities in 
creative writing of pupils of high-school age. We had faith 
that the productive range is more extensive than commonly 
believed, and that the best literary education comes with the 
amplest self-realization of the individual at whatever age he 
happens to be. So we have not thwarted effort, but en- 
couraged it, rather; we have treated with respect every sort 
of genuine self-expression, and have rigorously refrained from 
a too pedagogic correction. 


1An Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1922, ed. William Stanley Braithwaite (Small, Maynard). 


2Lincoln Verse, Story, and Essay (First Series) (The Lincoln School of Teachers College, 
New York City, 1923). 


3“*And do many of your children go in for Art afterwards?’’ we queried. ‘‘Not as a rule. 
They go into all sorts of professions and trades. That’s quite right—that’s what I like. I like 
to think of Art coloring all departments of life rather than being a separate profession.’”’ From 
The Child as Artist, Some Conversations with Professor Cizek, by F. M. W., 1921, distributed by 
the Art Alliance, New York City. 


THE CREATIVE SPIRIT STUDIED 3 


Our educational aim has been put most satisfactorily by 
William Stanley Braithwaite, one of the earliest to appreciate 
the significance of the work of these young writers: 


It is wonderful material you have to work with [he writes], 
the imaginative, elemental substances of the youthful mind. It 
is the time when, if they are guided, they can come under those 
influences which lead to the secrets in the heart of man and nature. 
Once made really to see and feel these secrets, they seldom lose the 
power and significance of them; and even if they do not become 
expressed poets later on, they will become possessed of that culture 
whose spirit is poetry. It will be wonderful later [he added], 
to look back and see what perfection has been created ‘‘either in 
manifest art or manifest personality.” 


II. Tue Creative Spirit STUDIED 


THE attitude of the artist toward his work has been an 
unfailing theme of classroom interest, and in this connection 
we have never drawn any sharp distinction between fine arts 
and letters. From the point of view of the Creative Spirit, 
the arts are one; only the product is different. Constantly, 
as here and there the excellent verse appeared, the informal 
talk has centered around the mystery of the product of the 
artist. Almost any one of our pupils could now discuss the 
matter from personal experience: deep within us is a vast 
imaginative power, varying in quality and in intensity but 
probably the same in each of us; it finds for itself, in devious 
unreasonable ways, an artistic expression. This point of 
view could not be really alive among pupils unless they 
recognized it as a true interpretation of their daily experi- 
ence. We ask ourselves—I am now presenting one of our 
methods of approach—how thoughts come to us; where we 
got this and that fine idea, this felicitous phrase, that stimu- 
lating picture or figure of speech; and while we never achieve 
completely satisfying answers, we learn to respect the 1n- 
stinctive self within us, that possible product of animal and 
spiritual race-accumulations which is, at its best, so right and 


4 CREATIVE YOUTH 


sure, so beautiful and wise. The large liberty permitted us 
in our school, we comprehend eventually, is to set more free 
that sure, right, beautiful, and wise self. 

Everyone is conscious of the curious personal phenomena, 
not easily explained, by which art comes into being. It is 
accompanied by elation, by an almost unnatural feeling of 
well-being; fatigue disappears; enormous quantities of labor 
can be accomplished; one can work for hours without a de- 
mand for rest, or even for food or sleep. Young people know 
all about this characteristic of the vital energy; their lives 
are rich in the experience of its ways; therefore they can talk 
about it with understanding. Long ago I ceased taking 
notes on casual remarks of this and that pupil, as we talked 
of his writing. ‘The proof is clear to me that in this respect 
pupils do not differ from adults, except, I am sure, that 
children are in the main still artists, while adults have too 
often ceased to be. 

Here are some excerpts: “I stayed up nearly all night to do 
that. Mother came in and found me at five o’clock dressed 
and the light lit. I pretended to be asleep at my desk, but 
I was more awake than daytime.” ‘“‘I wrote that notebook 
full and didn’t eat or anything. ‘Terrible hungry after it was 
done. Thought I was sick, maybe. Wasn’t hungry”— 
pointing to the book—“then, though.” “Everybody else 
was shivering with the cold, and I was sitting over in the 
corner working at this, and thought it was fine, and had my 
coat unbuttoned, too.” Besides these, I have the instances 
of two boys, both of the highest scholastic standing, who cut 
school in order to get consecutive hours of steady, uninter- 
rupted work at the thing that had gripped them beyond the 
powers of resistance. ‘The result in one case is a scientific 
paper which has been much spoken of as superior to high 
college standard; the result in the other case is one of the best 
poems in this collection. 

Mothers are first to be aware of this grip of inspiration 


THE CREATIVE SPIRIT STUDIED 5 


From them I have two types of returns, one in which the 
mother rejoices that her boy (or girl, of course) is at so self- 
absorbing a task; the other from the sort who, having 
scheduled their children to a time table which takes care of 
every minute of the day and night, object to anything 
“irregular’’—by which they mean any stepping outside the 
path predestined by them. 

Early we find out that something interferes—many things. 
Shame is one of them, the result, frequently, of the false 
standards of our mates and of our elders. A laugh, goes the 
saying, is as good as a criticism; a laugh may seal forever one 
outlet of the spirit. Genius, of course, rises above such 
limitation; but I hope it is understood that the question has 
here nothing to do with genius but simply with young persons 
of high-school age. 

Coercion, it is generally agreed, destroys, although many 
pupils insist that their best work has been produced under the 
terrible compulsion of necessity. The approach of the time 
of printing the school magazine has driven the editors to a 
levy upon contributors for copy which has often led to a half- 
the-night struggle to produce; but out of this artificial and 
really hateful tasking have come some astonishing reve- 
lations of the inner self. Many of the poems in this volume 
are the results of self-imposed tasks, a deliberate setting 
oneself to work for real or fancied needs. Asa rule, however, 
the creative spirit may not be driven out, but it may be en- 
ticed out. In fact, it seems to have many of the qualities 
of Poe’s Imp of the Perverse, an incorrigible obstinacy that 
lays itself out to defeat those who would arbitrarily command 
it. An illustration of this point I take from my notes of 
cases: The Director of the School tells of meeting the author 
of Moon Madness! just after the appearance of this, her first 
published poem, had brought her the acclaim of pupils and 
teachers alike. ‘‘Now,” he said, curious to see how she 


1Page 165. 


i 
* ge 


6 CREATIVE YOUTH 


would react, “I want you to write me a poem, and [| shall 
give you the subject’’—he then gave it to her—‘‘and its 
length—about so long,” he measured; “‘and I want it done 
for a meeting of junior high-school pupils to-morrow after- 
noon. ‘There will be no objection if itis humorous.” “But, 
Doctor Caldwell,’’ she exclaimed, astonished at the order, 
“poems are not written that way! They come because 
of the way I think and feel.myse/f. I will try to write one 
for you, of course, but I don’t think it will be the one you 
want, for I don’t know even myself what it is going to be; 
but it must be my own, and when you tell me what to write 
about—that, I’m afraid, will make me not want to write 
it at all, because it wouldn’t be mine, you see, but—”’ 
pathetically desirous of not offending—‘‘but yours, if you 
see what I mean.” He saw exactly that she understood and 
was glad. 

We discover, too, what seems to be a law of the creative 
spirit, that it does not, except on rare occasions, give forth 
its best 1t once. The sad part of the mystery of creative 
effort is that with every sign of the divine afHlatus the 
product is not always good. Here is where a sympathetic 
understanding of the forces at work is imperatively needed 
from teacher or friend (I wish there could be no real dis- 
tinction!). Out of the mass of not-so-good may come 
enough material to build on; or, at least, some obstruction 
to the Creative Spirit is got out of the way. Inferior work 
seems sometimes to appear of necessity before the deeper 
best may reach expression. All good things must first be 
worked over, therefore; and if our first rough drafts are 
a little ridiculous, we learn early not to be discouraged. 
Particularly we fight against the self-disgust that would 
destroy those first attempts. If we have any arbitrary rule 
it is, ““ Never destroy a scrap, no matter how bad it may seem 
to be.” ‘The figure that has been most instructive here is 
that of a new stream, muddied, at first, until the water from 


THE CREATIVE SPIRIT STUDIED 7 


the far spring begins to flow. A more practical illustration 
comes from the painter: he makes no outright perfect can- 
vases; his failure is so constant that he accepts it calmly as a 
natural step toward that best which, if he persists, will ap- 
pear in its own good time. 

The painter’s experiences come up often in the daily dis- 
cussions of our art; so it was natural that from the pupils I 
should hear first of the traveling exhibition of paintings, 
drawings, and woodcuts made by the children taught by 
Professor Cizek in his classes at the Vienna School of Arts 
and Crafts; and that the members of our classes should go 
there voluntarily in groups and singly to study an art so 
allied to their own, particularly as it was done by children 
of almost exactly their own age. Reproductions of the 
paintings and woodcuts of these Austrian children soon 
appeared on the classroom bulletin board. One pupil 
brought the descriptive pamphlet, The Child as Artist; it 
was passed around until all had read it. A boy remarked, 
with an amused glance at the teacher, it must be admitted, 
“Now I shall know what to say to people when they ask me 
about the poetry of the Lincoln School. I shall read them 
this: 


“How do you do it?” we asked at last, when we had looked 
at some hundreds of the productions of Professor Cizek’s pupils 
each more delightful and original than the last. 

“But I don’t do it,” he protested with a kind of weary pity 
for our lack of understanding. ‘“‘I take off the lid, and other art 
masters clap the lid on—that is the only difference.” 


Writing men, I often remind them, tell the same story of 
those monstrous first appearances before the final draft re- 
veals something approaching the hoped-for result. We 
bring to our discussions first-hand information from these 
men. From every side comes the story of scribbled notes, 





iThe same title is used to introduce an excellently illustrated article on the work of Professor 
Cizek’s children in the Independent, December 20, 1924. 


8 CREATIVE YOUTH 


often disjointed and sprawling; of rewritings; of eliminations 
and scribbled additions; of more rewritings; of later reshap- 
ings of the whole, new balancings, better proportionings; and 
of a final reconsideration of each part for its effect upon the 
reader. And after that, when the creative fire has spent 
itself, the mechanical editing into a properly spelled, punctu- 
ated, paragraphed piece, matters which the schoolroom is 
prone to put as the first and only consideration. In its place 
it is of high importance, this coldly intellectual stage; the 
value of a piece of created work is raised there in direct pro- 
portion to the intelligence of the creator. 

We note early that form is not the first consideration. 
Fryrst is the idea, or, perhaps, merely the vague but insistent 
feeling to compose—*‘the itch to write,” the wise ancients 
called it. I tell them of Santayana’s remark to a group of 
his students that for him it was often simply the irrepressible 
urge to put something-he-knew-not-what down upon a piece 
of blank paper, although he said he got to expect from past 
performances that a poem was aboug to emerge; that, fre- 
quently, the end came forth briskly before the beginning, or 
it might turn out to be the middle, after all; and that, likely 
as not, he might have for his pains nothing but an unintel- 
ligible fragment, which, if he was patient and waited, would 
grow its necessary and seemingly predestined parts. ‘“‘Inspi- 
ration”’ is the word we used to call this natural phase of 
creative work, as if a mediumistic ‘“‘control” were guiding the 
result. Indeed, the product at,its best has many of the quali- 
ties that suggest the impulse of an alien but friendly spirit. 

However, we do not wait for inspiration; we know that it 
comes quicker if we go out to meet it. Havinga special place 
in which towork, and always using that place, is a good way for 
many; and to go there often with paper and pencil, making 
a regular rendezvous with inspiration, as it were. ‘There, 
initial distaste for working may often slip into a sudden rush 
of desire. We go to the accustomed place, locking out all 


THE CREATIVE SPIRIT STUDIED 5 


tempting outside opposition—even the view!—and wait. 
It doesn’t matter if sometimes we spend the time making 
iterated sketches of the same type of profile; or if the paper 
becomes a blotch of formless inky design. Sometimes we 
write the flattest stuff for half the time; then, without our 
even knowing it, the Silent Doors slide, and we are in the 
Never Never Land. Stevenson tells of watching the work- 
manlike painters at Barbizon. “My job is like theirs,” he 
cried. ‘“‘Every day they go at their work, their job, not 
waiting for inspiration or mood or even for subject. Some- 
thing, a little, every day; and the result is mountainous!” 
We know that this picture remained with him the remainder 
of his days, a rebuke to bad writing habits, and a stimulus 
for his duller hours. 

Of course, none of us has the same mental make-up, so 
there is no sure recipe for enticing the creative forces to work; 
the point for the pupil is by studying himself to find out what 
for him is best. 

And to make sure %est our elders may think that the 
creative impulse is a wild and turbulent thing, we hasten to 
add that an outward calmness is one of its chief characteris- 
tics. It flows along like Arnold’s hidden river in Buried 
Life; it can be there in the midst of absorbing play and wordy 
debate, consciously there, waiting for its right moment of 
isolation; it can operate in the very madding crowd and no 
one but the owner be aware of its existence. For Shelley is 
right in claiming, in his Defence of Poetry, that the poetic 
fire is at its height long before the comparatively cool busi- 
ness of putting it to words on paper. ‘This is why teachers, 
parents, and friends fail so often to note its presence. Our 
five-year experiment in creative writing, if it does nothing 
else, should prove the worth of watching a little more keenly 
for its many and varied sensitive manifestations. 

The formal side is important, we know; but experience in 
the making of imaginative verse and prose leads us to the 


10 CREATIVE YOUTH 


conclusion that it does not come first in importance. They 
have their places, grammar, rhetoric, the principles of 
composition, rhyme schemes, climax, speed, dénouement, 
impasse—one might go on until all the textbook categories 
have been listed; but to the artist all these take meaning only 
‘because of their recognition as part of the inner reality of 
thought and feeling.t. The schools not only place them first 
in the business of instruction, but offer traditionally little 
else. Definition and classification, important tools of 
scholarship, have an ancient right to priority. One re- 
members St. Chrysostom’s reply to those who would cate- 
chize him with definitions as a test of his piety, “I had 
rather be contrite than skilled in the definition thereof.” 

Recently Willa Cather asked a group of us, all teachers 
of English, why the formal side of literature was stressed 
in the school at the expense of the sole reason for its value, 
namely, its effect upon the mind and spirit of man. The 
answer was, first, the recognition of the formal side of litera- 
ture—its shape, arrangement, and organization—is the 
easier to teach; and, second, we teachers do not seem to know 
anything else. While the discussion with Miss Cather 
brought out that teachers and grammarians are rarely them- 
selves artists, we contended, in our defense, that a feeling 
of this lack had already reached the elementary school, 
where amendment in method and material was undergoing 
notable changes; and we cited the colleges that were begin- 
ning to question the purely formal and historical approach, 
as instanced in recent appointments of poets like Witter 
Bynner, Robert Frost, Percy Mackaye, Robert Bridges. 
The artist has been more conspicuous in the college, perhaps, 


than in any other rank of teachers. Longfellow and Holmes 


1T shifted the little pens of color about, laid one color against the other. . . . Suddenly 
there had flashed into my consciousness, for perhaps the first time in my life, the secret inner 
world of the painters. . . . The true painter revealed all of himself in every stroke of his 
brush. . . . Very well, then, the words used by the tale-teller were as the colors used by 
the painter. Form was another matter. It grew out of the materials of the tale and the teller’s 
reaction to them. It was the tale trying to take form that kicked about inside the tale-teller 
at night when he wanted to sleep.’”,—Sherwood Anderson in A Story Teller’s Story (Huebsch, 


METHOD IN CERTAIN CASES ol Aw 


set traditions in this country, if not by their teaching, then 
by their acknowledged fame as literary artists. Professor 
Baker’s “Workshop 47” was one of the notable attempts 
to meet understandingly the needs of the creative writer. 
Brander Matthews, Bliss Perry, William Vaughn Moody, 
Robert Herrick, John Erskine, Katharine Lee Bates, Grace 
Hazard Conkling, Stark Young, David Morton, Alfred 
Noyes, to stop short in a long list, are teachers who have 
added to scholarship a perception, through participation, of 
the unique travail of the “maker” in letters. Evidence 
could be found, however, that often the artist has even here 
found himself opposed by the large number of formalists on 
the staff. 


III. ItLustration oF MetTHop IN CERTAIN CASES 


ONE sure sign of the genuineness of any art product is 
its unique character. Art never repeats and never copies. 
That the creative spirit has expressed itself among these 
pupils is evidenced by the individual note. Few echoes of 
other poets’ poetry are here, except where the imitation is 
obviously intended, but even in parody the individuality of 
the performance marks the verse as an original. As Braith- 
waite put it, we are seeking ‘‘the imaginative, elemental 
substances of the youthful mind’’; when these have appeared 
we have made much of them; when the hackneyed copy was 
offered we labeled it as such without enthusiasm. Conse- 
quently, such traditional poetic tags as wilst, ere, o’er, fain 
would, forsooth, alack, O thou, and the like, were soon taboo; 
along with traditional poetic ideas concerning the sun, moon, 
and stars, birds (nightingales, larks, and cuckoos in American 
landscapes!), and those flowers that bloom in the spring, 


Tn creative circles it is regarded as singular that Robert Frost intermittently and Robert 
Herrick persistently hold professorships; in professional circles it is commonly thought best, 
when an active poet or novelist is added to the staff of a university, to keep them below the 
salt with the instructors or among the side shows with the extension lecturers.”—Carl Van 
Doren in Many Minds, the chapter called ‘‘The Great Tradition.” 

wynner hints (“On Teaching the Young Laurel to Shoot,” New Republic, Dec. SPAS 
Part LI) that some of the ‘‘active poets’ were not reappointed in one university when it was 
discovered that they lacked the doctor’s degree! 


12 CREATIVE YOUTH 


which, accoraing to an excellent poetic authority, have noth- 
ing to do with the case. 


Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, 
Ballads by the score with the same old thought. 


Went also rhymes for rhyme’s sake, as well as the lazy do put 
in to round out a short line, and all the ‘‘faint iambics” of 
Petit the Poet. 

Our first really exceptional poem came near the end of the 
first year of this experiment. The writing of verse had 
already begun to have a serious place in the work of the 
school, so a casual suggestion to the graduating class that 
a “class poem’’ might be appropriate brought a lengthy 
“poem” which featured the commonest of class-poem sym- 
bolism, the ships that set sail on uncharted seas, some of which 
would be wrecked on the rocks, others lost in storms and 
never traced, others that would reach the farther shore. 
There were side references, too, to the rungs of ladders and 
unexplored mountain paths. ‘This was the more remarkable 
as it was the product of a girl of rare originality of mind, and, 
in music, an accepted artist. The stanzas contained one 
provocative line, however, the first, 


The ever-passing steps went by our door. 


She handed it to me with a smile and as I read watched 
me with what I conceived to be a well-assumed indifference. 
I folded it slowly and said nothing. ‘‘ Will it do?”’ she asked. 

Obviously she had worked seriously and long. Should 
one risk the danger of discouraging effort? The mysterious 
forces of the spirit are notably sensitive to criticism.! With 
a younger pupil I should have placed the manuscript care- 
fully in my pocket with a non-committal remark, and have 

Tt was very little more than one hundred years ago—one hundred and five, to be exact— 
that Keats seriously pondered whether he shouid not give up poetry, and use the few pounds 
that remained to him in qualifying as a physician in Edinburgh. . . . The Quarterly 
had just killed ‘Endymion,’ pole-axed it; . . . the knocking on the head forever of his 


chance of becoming a successful poet had its effect upon him. Such things do.”—John Middle- 
ton Murry in ‘‘Some Thoughts on Criticism,” Literary Review, Dec. 13, 1924. 


METHOD IN CERTAIN CASES 13 


waited until it was forgotten. In this case I banked heavily 
upon the intelligence before me and said, “No; it’s very 
bad.” 

“‘What’s wrong with it?” she came back aflame. 

“Why do people do it?” I parried. “Every high-school 
senior class has at this moment one or a dozen persons busy 
on this sort of thing. And they will all turn out the same 
product, as if it were a standardized graduation article, as 
like as—as like as college alma mater songs, and almost as 
bad.” Then I went abruptly into details and shamelessly 
exposed the commonplaceness of her work—she whose 
mind, I knew, had ever disdained the commonplace! 

“But your first line!”’ I spoke with sudden enthusiasm. 
“That really startled and waylaid me. ‘That first line is the 
poetry of our time. The rest is hopelessly trade-marked.” 

She asked, with a touch, I suspected, of irony, about “‘the 
poetry of our time.”’ But I knew she was interested. ‘That 
one crumb of comfort, the single worthy line, had caught 
her. 

In a swift sketch, as the class was assembling, I told her of 
the method of the modern poets, how they had boldly dis- 
carded all the “poetic phrases” and “ poetic thoughts” of the 
past and had made fresh formule of word and idea to match 
their own observed world. Briefly I touched the main points 
in the credo of the new poetry. 

Without a word of reply she left me abruptly to take a seat 
at the back of the room. 

During the period a girl came forward to say quietly, 
*“You’d better let her go.’ She says she can’t stand it here 
much longer.” 

“Do tell her to go,” I whispered back. I had failed in my 
attack, I thought; I had been too direct. 

She went out of the room with her eyes set at a strange 
focus, far away. Chairs and small tables were thrust aside 
roughly; the door was slammed open. But she heard neither 


14 CREATIVE YOUTH 


that, she claimed later, nor the laugh of the class; and had no 
remembrance of a precipitous exit. Her friend volunteered 
as an apology, “She said she had a poem in her, and that if 
she had to stay in this room another minute without writing 
it she would scream.” 

Before the hour was over she brought back the astonishing 
lines of The Door Stands Open! They came from her in a 
torrent, with hardly the necessity of an erasure. Nothing 
remained of the original verses but the first line. 

I have read the poem often to groups of parents and 
teachers. It never fails to make a penetrating impression. 
The wonder is how a girl of her inexperience could know 
intuitively so much about life. The pathos of futile scholar- 
ship is in the lines, 


There stands a man who watches those who start out; 
He sees them drop unnoticed things of value 

For which he stoops and searches in the dust; 

He is one who went out and has returned 

With nothing. 


The blight of ignorance has touched this blithe figure: 


Here returns a man whose face must once have been like that 
youth’s; 
His eyes are broken windows, and he babbles without sense. 


Commenting upon this curiously true insight, Professor 


Franklin Baker said: 


They know before they know, these children. They foresee 
experience before they have experience. In some respects they 
are wiser as children than ever they will be later.2 


1Page 258. 


*The best brief account of the point of view of contemporary poetry is in the Preface to 
Untermeyer’s Modern American Poetry, revised edition (Harcourt, 1921), which includes Amy 
Lowell’s six articles of faith of the Imagists. A critique of these articles in Professor Erskine’s 
The Kinds of Poetry (Duffield, 1920) must not be missed; his important chapter, ‘‘The New 
Poetry,” contains a passage that sums up all the counsel a teacher ever need aspire to give to 
young poets: “‘Acquire new cadences, the imagists advise us, so that you may express a new 
idea; yet if we have the new idea and try to give it sincere expression, it is hard to see how we 
shall miss a new rhythm—the excellence of Mr. Masters and of Mr. F rost is that they have built 
their art from the inside outward, and their success illustrates once more, what the young poet 
will nee easily learn, that a large audience waits for those whose heart and mind compel them to 
speak.” 


METHOD IN CERTAIN CASES 15 


A boy permits me to tell the story of his earliest efforts, 
how he brought me a small volume of verses that were like 
The Young Visiters, so bad that they were good. ‘The war 
had made a terrible impression upon him; he wrote of battle 
and blood with a seriousness that was almost comic. 

My advice was to keep them one year, and then to show 
them to me. I forget now how I made that suggestion 
_ reasonable without offense. I told him to keep on writing, 
however. ‘Then one day he gave me 


Ciry NIGuHTs 


When the lights of the city are bright and they gleam, 
And the moon looks down on the level street, 

I always dream the selfsame dream 

Of hills that are wide and of woods that are green 
And of places where two brooks meet. 


Since then he has moved forward steadily, with never a 
trace of his former Ashfordisms. A considerable body of 
commendable verse he has already achieved, most of which 
is republished here; Down the Nights and Down the Days and 
Beyond,' we venture to believe, are the work of an authentic 
poet. 

In the illustrations used so far, two points stand out that 
might be helpful to teachers and parents: first, that when the 
way is made easy, poetry is brought to us good and bad. 
That means, simply, that poetry is already there. Much of 
it has already been written, is bound away in secret note- 
books or hoarded in private drawers. Evidence of this is 
overwhelming. At the beginning, after we had won the 
confidence of those who had already written, we found 
veritable volumes, the chirography showing grades of script 
from the earliest gross lettering to the latest ill-spelled scrawl. 
And even before that, doubtless, the young authors had 





iPages 166 and 230. 


16 CREATIVE YOUTH 


lisped in numbers!!_ Evidently poetic expression is one of 
our primal instincts, a useful thing in the barbarous days 
when rhythmic dancing and singing were serious open-air 
occupations of adults; it atrophies with disuse, for we do not 
notice among the serious street occupations of our adult 
citizenry any widespresd attempts to “dance the juba from 
wall to wall.” We are in this respect like the house dog that 
James used to love to talk about, who sought to bury his 
bone under a rug; one remembers that James’s dog gave up 
burying bones in the house after he found the sure daily 
meat in his dish. 

The second point is that the poetic insight once really 
obtained—one must forget the dog parable now—is never 
again lost; or, as Mr. Braithwaite so finely put it, “Once 
made to really see and feel the secrets, they seldom lose the 
power and significance of them.” 

There should be a third point here on method: no matter 
how bad the product may be, the poet must be invited to do 
more. “Very interesting,” you say; “very interesting, 
indeed! Now you let me have this for my collection, but 
keep on writing. This is what we call personal poetry; it is 
excellent, for you and for me, who understand it; but it isn’t 
the kind that strangers would instantly like. Some day you 
will write a poem as true and as sincere and as honest as this 
one, and every reader will feel exactly as you do about it. 
And there is only one way to write that sort of poem, the 
way you have written this one, fearlessly, carelessly, a bit of 
your-own-feeling, nobody-else’s. All good poetry is first 
‘personal poetry’ and then ‘everybody’s poetry.’” 

But this already gives a wrong impression of the part the 
teacher plays in criticism. Consider that the writing of 


1“Nathalia had been writing her verse for several months before Mr. and Mrs. Crane came 
across it, writing it without fuss or excitement and storing it ina small and private album, 
content apparently with the record of whatever pleasure the rereading of it gave her. If she 
had, even secretly, any concern with such vanity as applause, she certainly did not betray it.”— 
Nathalia at Ten, by Nonnally Johnson in introduction to The Janitor’s Boy and Other Poems, 
by Nathalia Crane (Seltzer, 1924). 


LINCOLN | 
LORE 


JANUARY 1924 





People Philip Jordan 
The Black Hills ., Aileen Gould 
Our Lady of the Shipwreck Eleanor Flexner 
The Pursuit of Zero The Lincoln Imp 
The Lucky Charm Jack Lait, Jr. 
Two Poems Beatrice Wadhams 
To a Friend James Flexner 
Two New England Poets Hope Hamilton 
Book Reviews Adéle Philips 
Henry Fox 

A Page of New Poets 
I Stood Alone Upon the Rocks Nathalie Swan 
The Call of the Air Gholson Kittredge 
To a Young Poet Lincoln Reis 
The Path Alwin Pappenheimer 
I Wonder Elizabeth Marshall 
| Folly Anonybid 
| Coming Events Dot 
Athletics John Van Pelt 


Editorials ( First Half Dozen Announcements 


VOLUME VI NUMBER IV 





Lincoln Lore was awarded the first prize and silver cup as 
the best magazine of its class at first annual convention of the 
Columbia Scholastic Press Association, New York City, March, 


1925. 
17 


18 CREATIVE YOUTH 


poetry has never been with us a classroom exercise but really 
a by-product that had had no place in the regular school 
program. Conferences, such as were had, were snatched 
between “‘periods”’ or in breathless perambulations in halls 
and on stairs. Our poetry, we always felt, was something 
we did for its own sake, and that naturally we should use our 
own time for it. (Here one might record a grateful word to 
those teachers who endured, with never a word of complaint, 
the interruptions to their classes caused by the belated 
arrivals of these poets!) So of formal group instruction 
there was none. 

We early reached the point where a large group of boys 
and girls naturally took over the question of values. Whena 
good poem arrived, endless small matters of technique were 
the topic of general discussion. The poem is passed around 
and fought over, but the teacher is only one of many voices, 
each striving to be heard. In that hurried give-and-take, 
bombast, posing, unclear or insincere thinking, are laid bare 
in language’ more instructive than any adult could contrive. 
The strong line that over-shadows the weak line, the bril- 
lance at the beginning that makes a good end appear shabby, 
the fine idea that is too good to lose in doggerel, the phrase 
of astonishing beauty that is worth building up into an en- 
tirely different poem—these topics, I see, by my notes, are 
frequent in the wordy and often noisy debates that greet a 
worthy poem. 

From these notes let me transcribe the incidents that 
accompanied the final shaping of First Snow.t The editor 
of the Lore came forward, having just broken loose from a 
group who were chattering and gesticulating in a way I got 
to understand; he was waving a manuscript. ‘Bea’s got 
something rather fine, I think,” he said as he handed it to 
me. I read it while he waited. “Astonishing!” I said. 


1Page 170. 


METHOD IN CERTAIN CASES 19 


7 
‘**Fancy a snow storm at night being likened to a violently 
egotistic clown!”’ I quoted exultantly: 


Pierrot 
Shows off to the stars 
To-night! 


Yes,” he agreed, but with noticeable restraint. “That 
refrain is fine. Daring, too, to put it at the top and invite 
a fall-down later. But os 

“You wouldn’t change it?”’ I wondered. This editor had 
an uncanny perception of values; I should not think of setting 
up my own judgment against his. 

“Oh, no. It belongs there. She’s strong enough to put 
it there. But—do you like all of it?” 

I read it again, aware of the danger of those false first 
enthusiasms. “No,” I said, “but I was so carried away by 
the picture as a whole that I didn’t take in anything else. 
The last two lines is 

“Exactly!”’ he broke in. “Too full of thinking. In- 
volved. The whole thing is light, light as the first snow, 
and she i 

“She stopped to think.” 

“Exactly! And Bea has no right to think. She’s too 
fine for thinking; she is great when she’s herself.” 

At that moment Bea interrupted with one of her flying 
entrances. “ Jimmy likes it,” she told me, laughing her most 
pleased laugh, but noting Jimmy’s solemn face anxiously. 

*“All but the last two lines,” Jimmy corrected. 

We explained. She snatched the paper. “Oh, how I 
toned over that!’ She exclaimed with high disdain of her 
work. ‘The rest was easy, but that!” And she was off, 
with the crumpled script in her hand. 

It came back smoother, lighter. ‘Then we noticed that the 
next to the last line felt too long. Besides, a night had 
passed and the line had wilted. Some poems, we find, 











20 CREATIVE YOUTH 


evaporate overnight, become less and less astonishing. So 
her next to the last line had suddenly put on a strut that 
was juvenile, elementary. 


Laughing to see 
That you are just snowflakes 
Falling on me. 


In the halls, as she hurried to French, I waylaid her. “It’s 
still too ” T began. | 

“T know,” she cried gayly. “It’s the next to the last line. 
I have spent hours over it but can’t do anything with it.” 

We are racing toward the Frenchman’s door where lateness 
is unpardonable. “And it’s too long. Make it 5 

“TI have an idea!” she cried. 

“Bring those pearls down to——” 

“Oh! ve got another idea! All right! They’ll come 
down.” We are at the classroom door; she is backing in; 
the class is at attention and the teacher is under WAY ial 
will come down’—stage whisper—‘during the French!” 

Through the glass door I wave a pantomimic apology to 
my good friend, the teacher. He grins back at me, shrugs, 
throws up his hands, points to both of us and taps his head. 
He understands. 

And that is a partial and much-condensed account of the 
final stage in the making of one of the most delightful lyrics 
of this volume. 

When the distinctive poem arrived we always made a 
ceremony of it at the opening of the next class. The oc- 
casions were rare, for we were careful not to give the honor to 
any but the best, and therefore we were able to put a right 
thnill into it. At those times, as I looked on the suddenly 
stilled and alert faces, I often thought of the boy Agathon 
receiving the prize for tragic poetry in the presence of those 
thirty thousand Hellenes.1 


1A more pedagogical writer would surely add: See Sympos., vol. Iil, Dial. Plato, ts. B. 
Jowett (Oxford), 








METHOD IN CERTAIN CASES 21 


“Before you begin your program for to-day,” I would say, 
“T have something—rather good, I think—to read to you.” 

Fortunately for me their approval almost always seconded 
my own; but I err if I give any picture of dependent minds 
watching to jump to the windy side of the teacher’s superior 
law. Those who know the Lincoln School pupils are quite 
aware that their training has not led them into that galley! 
No; if they agreed with me I felt surer of my ground; if they 
disagreed I questioned my own judgment. ‘Their minds had 
been freed; they were, consequently, clearer than their more 
learned elders of all the petty prejudices of taste. 

The news would spread quickly down the halls, sometimes 
overtaking the astonished young poet. Nothing was more 
encouraging to me at these times than to see with what 
generosity the pupils spent their praise; and to a new poet 
they gave sometimes a too-overwhelming tribute of honest 
admiration. In other words, they seemed to treat success 
in this sort of literary achievement as on the same level— 
well, almost on the same level!—as point winning in inter- 
class soccer. What more may a teacher of academic sub- 
jects hope for! 

Sometimes, however, we began a period with a discussion 
of a poem that was so good in spots that one felt that some- 
thing should be done about it. On one such day we acci- 
dently unearthed a word, new to that audience, cliché. An 
excellent poem of a sea-storm viewed from the shore had 
been spoiled, we thought, by the clichés of tossing waves, 
forked lightning, crash of thunder and the like, ending with 
stormtossed boats, smashed finally into, of course, kindling. 

But the strange, and possibly comic, word cliché took all 
their attention. A lively-witted girl began to write rapidly, 
and with studied ostentation. In a moment she broke into 
the general talk with “‘Is fluffy cloud a cliché ?”’ The laugh 
that followed answered her. She appeared dramatically 
dejected, gazing open-eyed at her paper as if she had just 


ae CREATIVE YOUTH 


surprised a bug there. “But not boundless blue?” The 
laugh was even more tempestuous. ‘And molten gold ? 
And dewy earth?” The class confirmed her worst fears, to 
speak pure cliché. “But surely,” she brightened up, “ fet- 
tered soul is Her sentence was lost in a shout. She 
shook her head, murmuring, “Rosy sunset, of course; and 
hazy blue; yes, I see,” and dropped her manuscript with a 
delightful affectation of despair. ‘Someone is always taking 
the poetry out of life,” she said. 

Immediately she cheered up and began again with mock 
zeal to write; this time she was flying to catch up with the 
very wind of inspiration. Shortly I received the following 
illustration of the effectiveness of our teaching, a thing [ 
treasure as a triumph of personal pedagogy: 





B. C. (BeForeE Cliché) 


Morning 


I watched a fluffy cloud drift by 
Across the boundless blue of sky 

And saw the sun’s rays, molten gold, 
Upon the dewy earth unfold. 


Evening 


I felt my fettered soul uplift 
Before the rosy sunset drift 
And in the hazy blue afar 

I saw the gleaming evening star. 


A. D. (Arrer DiscoverINc—’EM) 


Morning 


I saw the sun with battered face 
Trying to warm the human race; 
T watched a sodden cloud limp by 
Like some discouraged custard pie. 


METHOD IN CERTAIN CASES 23 


Evening 


The sleepy sun in flannels red 
Went yawning to its Western bed; 
I saw one shivering small star 
No brighter than our dishpans are. 


For the sake of the art of teaching it is a pity that such 
intimate and natural material as I possess on the creative 
work of these pupils may not be publicly divulged. It were 
a profanation of friendship to do so. Nothing is given here 
but what has really happened in at least a small public way 
and therefore is general property. But the exhibition of 
the personal struggle to achieve is most fruitful in under- 
standing this natural output of young life. In a way one 
senses the environment in which the creative spirit thrives, 
and catches a notion of the mysterious laws of its being; and 
sees, too, how simple and unlearned the whole process is.! 

Generalizations and abstract principles, valuable as they 
are to right thinking in the field of education, are frequently 
of little profit to parents or grade teacher, who have not often 
the skill to translate them into terms of personal application. 
Let this be my excuse, therefore, to give a type of child re- 
action—I shall disguise some of the facts and purposely 
include data from more than one pupil, keeping the essential 
truth untouched—which carries with it its own warning. 

A new girl had “handed in” a set of verses to a pupil com- 
mittee of the junior high school, which were accepted as a 
matter of course and were mimeographed for general circu- 
lation in the junior high-school paper, the Lorette. Here they 
created no special comment until the editors of the Lore, 
the senior high-school magazine, pounced upon them with 
enthusiasm and printed them. That, perhaps, would not 


1“Tf a child can write such a poem (Gift) at eight years old, what does it mean? That de- 
eas I think, on how long the instructors of youth can be pursuaded to keep ‘hands off’. . . . 

think there is too much native sense of beauty and proportion here to be entirely killed even 
by the drying and freezing process which goes by the name of education.’”’-—Amy Lowell, in 
the Preface to Poems by a Liitle Girl, by Hilda Conkling (Stokes, 1920). 


24 CREATIVE YOUTH 


have concerned the young poet, as the thought of doing any- 
thing distinctive and unnatural could not then have oc- 
curred to her. However, the senior high-school students are 
not able to contain their excitement when a new poet swims 
into their ken, so must meet the young lady in hall and 
on stairs with sincere congratulations, the editor-in-chief 
of the Lore himself remembering to hold her on the way to 
classes with a fine speech of praise. 

The next morning her mother was waiting for me, a woman 
of rare understanding and sympathy. She said, “I want to 
tell you about Clara, so that you will understand. She is 
terribly disturbed by the reaction of the school to her poems 
and says she will never ‘hand in’ another one as long as she 
is in that ‘hateful school.’ ‘It may have been all right to 
print it, Mother,’ the child had cried, ‘but why did they talk 
to me about it, and before everybody !” 

“She has been writing poems all her life,” the mother went 
on, “but [have learned not totalk about themto her, although 
she knows I have saved all of them. When one is finished 
she drops it on my dressing table. After that she never cares 
about it but begins another. When she came to this school 
and found that all the children were ‘handing them in,’ she 
dropped her latest ones in with the others and went on about 
her work unconcerned, really, with the outcome. Well, the 
outcome was a shock. ‘The praise that came to her from all 
sides frightened her, and therefore it angered her. Iam sure 
she will get over it—I hope that no real harm has been done; 
we know so little about these things—but I came simply 
to tell you, so that you would understand what to do.” 

Clara’s case illustrates something else besides the strange 
laws under which the sensitive creative spirit performs its 
work; it is one more example of the amount of verse that is 
written secretly, at least as far as the schoolroom may ever be 
aware of it. Our constant surprise at first was in noting 
the number of boys and girls who had been writing imagi- 


METHOD IN CERTAIN CASES 25 


native prose and verse but had concealed the fact. And 
even now, when the attitude of sympathetic interest makes 
“handing in’’ an easy matter, a group of inglorious poets, 
I have reason to believe, prefers to blush unseen. I may not 
tell how we found a complete volume of beautiful verse, too 
personal, and perhaps too amorous for publication in a high- 
school magazine—poems that had been compiled slowly for 
a year without a single hint of confession from the author. 
The editors of the Lore are invaluable here; they seek out 
and discover poets who would never bring their work to a 
teacher. Through a prowling editor I discovered recently 
one of the finer verses that we print in this collection; but 
incidentally I saw that the young man’s notebook contained 
a score or more of poems which some day we may have—if we 
are not too indelicate in our approach. ‘The effect of these 
illustrations cannot be understood unless one knows with 
what sympathetic understanding, from teaching staff and 
pupils alike, the work of the literary artist is received in this 
school. One wonders what terrible losses obtain in other 
types of education! 

This sympathetic atmosphere visiting teachers note almost 
invariably and comment uponit. Pupils read poetry aloud 
without, seemingly, a thought of self-consciousness. ‘The vis- 
itor, seeking a clue, wonders if a special literary group has not 
been selected for this School; but those of the staff who have 
seen the spirit of the School develop from the beginning, 
know that the achievement in spirit and in attitude has come 
slowly; that, like growth, it has put on its layers impercep- 
tibly. Further, it is the result of a philosophy of education 
which, it seems to one observer, is common to the Director of 
the School and to the staff he has personally chosen to assist 
him, a philosophy which is not ready yet to set limits to a 
pupil’s achievement at any stage of his growth, which be- 
lieves that education is not put on like stucco on a wall, but 
comes primarily from within, which receives without ques- 


26 CREATIVE YOUTH 


tion any sincere product, nor intrudes at every stage of 
growth with a too severe or too unnatural standard of per- 
fection. 


IV. How WE Becan 


To THOSE who have wished more specific direction, particu- 
larly to those who have asked us how we set about to get 
such naive expressions of the’spirit as are illustrated in this 
volume, our invariable reply is to say, “Start with what you 
have and be patient.” 

In our first year of this experiment we had, until the end 
of the school year, only the child-like verses which with a deal 
of careful coaxing we brought to light from treasured note- 
books and private hiding places. We found these in the 
eighth grade, the class that is now about to graduate. Others 
existed, no doubt, in every grade. Some of the earlier lines 
we printed and, with caution, talked about them.! Others 
came forth slowly, some fair, some very bad. All were re- 
ceived and made the basis of informal personal instruction; 
that is, we tried to show why in given cases the feeling of the 
poet did or did not become the feeling of the reader, an 
understandable criterion and one from which it was possible 
to begin. Sometimes the serious mood of the poet became 
comedy to the reader; often it was possible, without at all 
discouraging, to show why. Sometimes the verses did not 
make sense; at other times they struck up against insur- 
mountable conventions, like the forbidden combination of 
rhymed and unrhymed stanzas; again we found unrhythmic 
prose posing as poetry, the discussion of which was always 
fruitful. 

We never praised outright until we found the superior 
thing, be it an idea, a line, or a completed verse. But when 
that superior thing came—and it began to pop out here and 


1Two of the poems found in these private notebooks, The Afterglow and The Wind is a Shepe 
herd, are reproduced in Part [ of the anthology of Lincoln School verse that follows. 


HOW WE BEGAN 27 


there from most unexpected sources (unexpected to the 
author, I mean!)—then we cheered and spread the news afar. 
The staff as a whole joined in the exultation; and the Direc- 
tor of the School—instinctively aware of his part in the plot— 
was never too busy to learn the good news and to share in 
the rejoicing. Somehow we made the author feel that some- 
thing really fine had happened in the lives of all of us, and, 
with the exception of the new girl, Clara, who was not quite 
prepared for our kind of joy in work well done, we do not 
know of anything but good that came out of this frank and 
sincere appreciation. 

What we really look for is instinctive insight, something 
never imitative and never wholly from without. Professor 
Briggs, however, did approach it from without and achieved 
delightful results... Rather, his study with a high-school 
class of the formal aspects of poetry awakened such interest 
as brought forth, unexpectedly, an outburst of creative 
effort which otherwise might ever have remained unex- 
pressed. A volume of privately printed verse was the tangi- 
ble result, Lacrime Musarum. But it is to be noted that the 
poetry came, not because of the study of prosody, but in 
spite of it. The main point in his experiment, we suspect, is 
that here a wise teacher permitted that overflow of spon- 
taneous feeling and made the most of it for the literary end 
he had in mind. 

And instinctive insight is too personal to be fashioned by 
someone else. Neither the subject matter nor the form of 
any poem in this collection has been set or even suggested 
by a teacher. That attitude of non-interference with the 
work of the artist is the basis of Professor Baker’s success 
with his Workshop 47. “But Professor Baker never told 
one how his play should be written!” writes Perceval 
Reniers in “Behind the Scenes of 47 Workshop.”? “That 


1“The Teaching of Prosody: a Means and an End,” by Thomas H. Briggs, Bulletin, Illinois 
Assoctation of Teachers of English, vol. X, no. II 


2New York Times Magazine, Dec. 7, 1924. 


28 CREATIVE YOUTH 


did seem to be a little tough when he was supposed to be the 
best teacher of playwriting in the country; seemed so, that is, 
until suddenly the student found he was doing it the right 
way himself. And this was a thing that the students who 
spared themselves in the matter of work, in self-analysis and 
in the bitter struggle of writing and rewriting, and rewriting 
again, never quite found out.” 

Poetry, an outward expression of instinctive insight, must 
be summoned from the vasty deep of our mysterious selves. 
Therefore, it cannot be taught; indeed, it cannot even be 
summoned; it may only be permitted. ; 

And its practical use when permitted? Well, it is the hope 
of civilization. The only chance the world has, so many 
think in all parts of Europe and America to-day,! of breaking 
its old bad habits and forming new good ones is by fostering— 
not thwarting—the impulses of youth. The new education 
becomes simply, then, the wise guidance of enormously 
important native powers. For centuries we adults have 
demanded that youth shall fashion itself in our image; so the 
business of education in the past has been largely the perse- 
cuting of the unbeliever; and the beautiful religion of the 
child, which some of us believe to be the true faith, has been 
destroyed, its temples sacked. And yet we have never quite 
stamped it out; and we have never quite believed it evil; that 
is our hope for the future. 

All this has been said over and over again by the philoso- 
phers. Let me give it again in the final words of one of the 
wisest of our modern thinkers on education22 


But with the dawn of the idea of progressive betterment and 
an interest in new uses of impulses, there has grown up some con- 
sciousness of the extent to which a future new society of changed 
purposes and duties may be created by a deliberate humane treat- 
ment of the impulses of youth. This is the meaning of education; 


See The International Education Yearbook, edited by I. L. Kandel (Macmillan, 1925). 
2John Dewey, in Human Nature and Conduct (Holt, 1922), the chapters on Impulses. 


HOW WE BEGAN 29 


for a truly humane education consists in an intelligent direction 
of native activities in the light of the possibilities and necessities 
of the social situation. . . . Among the native activities of 
the young are some that work toward accommodation, assimila- 
tion, reproduction, and others that work toward palicer ray dis- 
covery and creation. But the weight of adult custom has been 
thrown upon retaining and strengthening tendencies toward con- 
formity, and against those which make for variation and indepen- 
dence. The habits of the growing person are jealously kept within 
the limits of adult customs. The delightful originality of the child 
is tamed. . . . And yet the intimation never wholly deserts 
us that there is in the unformed activities of childhood and youth 
the possibilities of a better life for the community as well as for 
individuals here and there. ‘This dim sense is the ground of our 
abiding idealization of childhood. For with all its extravagances 
and uncertainties, its effusions and reticences, it remains a standing 
proof of a life wherein growth is normal not an anomaly, activity 
a delight not a task. . . . Our usual measure for the “good- 
ness”’ of children is the amount of trouble they make for grown-ups, 
which means of course the amount they deviate from adult habits 
and expectations. Yet by way of expiation we envy children their 
love of new experiences, their intentness in extracting the last 
drop of significance from each situation, their vital seriousness in 
things which to us are outworn. 


However, we are not so gaily giving up our function as 
teachers. Permitting those native impulses to play without- 
shame or fear of impertinence is in itself an art; and—here 
is the point which we seemingly left stranded some time 
back—our sincere approval when the inner spirit speaks its 
true and individual note, that is the finest thing we teachers 
may offer. For, we have found out, the poet does not al- 
ways know, until he has been told many times, which is his 
real self speaking and which is that other superimposed self, 
the mimic and poseur, that crow with the peacock’s feather. 

If we are able, then, at the very first signs to approve the 
right thing, growth begins in the individual; and, curiously, 
others discover immediately what sets us elders agog, and, as 
approval is very precious to them, and as they enjoy seeing 


30 CREATIVE YOUTH 


us agogging, the imitative personality is soon set aside and, 
for a rare moment, maybe, the shy, concealed self steps out. 
Illustration may help others in this essential matter of 
judging the true from the false. The third grade had visited 
the docks and wharves and from a high building had seen the 
ships in the bay. When they came back they talked about 
it eagerly and then they wrote about it “so that others might 
know, too.” The teacher, Miss Nell C. Curtis, guided them, 
of course, but without intruding. Out of the prose and 
verse of this reporting for others we printed in Lincoln Lore a 
column which we called Songs of the River and Sea. 
Margery writes: 


I am the captain of a great big ship 
That sails on the open sea 

Rough and wild are the waves I love 
Come and sail with me. - 


Elizabeth followed with: 


I am the captain of a big ferry boat 

And I’m always, always, always, on the float 
And when the fog is coming on 

I blow my whistle loud and long. 


These are commendable and sincere, but the following four 
lines by Peter are all that and more; they give us the picture 
in Peter’s mind, and they did to us what all good poetry 
does: they made us, by means of mere words, see with the 
poet’s very eyes: 

THE WorKER 
I am a little boat 
That goes a-tug-a-tug-a-tug 
I pull the great big barges 
Soi slows) iil a iSO SOW ain een SOASLON Ys 


Winthrop, however, did something else: he took us away 
from the scene altogether and let us into his imaginative self; 


HOW WE BEGAN 31 


and because he gave us so unreservedly what flashed upon 
the inward eye we found a complete answer in our own 
imaginative experience: 


A Dream SuHIp 


Once a ship went by my window 
It was a tiny sailboat 

In a minute I was aboard 

Sailing 

Sailing away! 


He who has not sailed in this magic boat, who does not still 
leap aboard as it goes by the window—well, “Let no such 
man be trusted”’! 

Further illustration is needed, for the crux of the matter 
is here: teachers, so I gather from many conferences with 
interested individuals and with groups, do not always know 
what is commonplace and what is the work of the artist. To 
teach one how to make that subtile distinction is not my 
purpose here, although one must admit in all frankness that 
without a sense for the difference the teacher becomes a 
stumbling block to those who are groping for light; but so 
much success has come from one type of illustration that I 
shall take space for it. 

Here are four stanzas written by children of about the 
same age and on somewhat the same themes. One pair is 
what might be expected, imitative, ordinary, the other two 
are the sure imaginative picture of the artist-poet. Not to 
confuse the reader I shall place the commonplace verse 
first in each instance and follow it immediately with the 
verse of the poet. 


Last night 

The rain came down 
And all the flowers 
Bended their heads 


32 CREATIVE YOUTH 
Sparkle up, litile tired flower 


Leaning on the grass; 
Did you find the rain of night 
Too heavy to hold? 


In the same way I give first a stanza, good but not dis- 
tinctive. followed by a poem wrought out of pure fantasy. 


AFTER THE SHOWERS 


The wind is blowing the flowers 

Sending out perfume of daisy and violet small; 
But after the showers 
Have rained on the flowers 

The smell is sweetest of all! 


LILAcs 


After the lilacs come out 

The air loves to flow about them 
The way water in wood-streams 
Flows and loves and wanders. 

I think the wind has a sadness 
Lifting other leaves, other sprays 
I think the wind is a litile selfish 
After lilacs come out. 


Sparkle Up, Little Tired Flower and Lilacs were written by 
Hilda Conkling! The other two are matter of fact; | am 
not sure if they are the results merely of seeing and thinking 
or of the sort of conventional attitude that comes from read- 
ing and being told. Hilda’s verses, however, have that soft 
sure tread of the real person in a strange, lovely world, with 
no guide but herself, for none is needed; she colors her ob- 
servings with a touch of her own philosophic self. In 
Sparkle Up, Little Tired Flower are pity and hope for all who 
suffer. (“But she may not know that—in words,” as the 





ota first in Poems by a Little Girl (Stokes, 1920) the second in Shoes of the Wind (Stokes, 


THE NON-POET AND THE HALF-POEM 33 


eleventh grade told me this week, ‘‘although she may know 
it without knowing it, instinctively.”’) And Hilda’s Lilacs 
is full of old myth. The wind is animate, personable, a little 
god, full of the prejudices and the jealousies of little gods. 
Hilda will always see the world that way, her way, because 
she is a poet. The other will see the world as she thinks 
someone wants it to be seen, or as she has read about it, 
until she takes the little step that leads her into herself. 


V. Tue Non-Port anp THE Ha.tr-PoEM. 


OF couRSsE, the “superior thing”’ must really appeal to the 
pupils as superior. At first, I am sure, our own pupils did 
not know what it was that set a small group of us going so 
excitedly. At the very beginning, indeed, we have to admit 
a strong; minority objection. At one time the question 
was debated heatedly in the halls as to whether the “maga- 
zine of literature”? should not be abolished and for it sub- 
stituted “something like the other school papers, with more 
athletic news and more good jokes.’ The teaching staff 
kept aloof, permitting that debate to rage until the minority 
were silenced, if not convinced. Later, as graduates, they 
have come over; especially as they learned to take a borrowed 
pride in the young poets of their alma mater whom they 
hear now and then spoken of outside with something of the 
faint voice of fame. 

Our pupils, however, are not primarily interested in fame. 
Poetry is written for its own sake, because it must be written; 
and those who do not write poetry at all feel no compunction 
to work at it. I check off now a list of boys and girls who 
are interested in poetry to the extent of buying volumes with 
their own pocket money, of insisting that their birthday and 
Christmas gifts shall be poetry, who find their most com- 
fortable occupation in unearthing poems for class reading, 
but who never consider themselves under any obligation to 


34 CREATIVE YOUTH 


write. The appreciative and critical demands of their 
nature are amply satisfied; they know we expect nothing 
further from them. 

On the other hand, I have in mind a group who write 
without ever once publishing, but who find their solace in 
thus expressing their moods and fancies, requiring nothing 
further. In personal discussion we treat these writers with 
the same receptive spirit that we should use with those of 
superior gifts. Just like the others, they write and revise, 
glow over the good line or the good thought, face the fact of 
this or that absurdity or crudity, all in the spirit of the 
mysterious creative art. And they understood our attitude 
thoroughly; they know that to us all sincere expressions of 
the inner spirit are serious and worthy; that even the most 
monstrous jumble might—who knows!—flash suddenly into 
pure design. Therefore we have no disappointed ones 
who try and fail and stop. There can be no true failure, so 
we teach, when one continually produces. 

While some of these poets write with never a suggestion of 
change from us, many of them, even the most accomplished, 
bring forth astonishing malformations. Long ago, it seems, 
they got used to doing it, so accept the imperfection with 
understanding, often with the keenest enjoyment of its 
inadequacy. ‘They are no longer afraid of being absurd! I 
have a folder full of copies of such half-poems, none of which 
we wholly despair of. Some are exquisite in parts, with 
hideous ends, middles, or beginnings. We laugh at them, 
and rejoice with unashamed vanity over the fine bits, and 
have faith that one of these days the whole will be deleted and 
amended, by a sudden command from within, into that per- 
fection which—faith, again!—the Creative Spirit really in- 
tended all the time. 

Here is such a fragment. I shall present only the good 
part of it. By the time this volume is ready for the press 
that fragment may have developed into the sonnet it was 


THE NON-POET AND THE HALF-POEM a5 


meant to be, but at present it is just an alluring octave with a 
commonplace sestet. But such an octave! 


BETWEEN THE WINGS 


Between the wings some watch for spotlight moons 
In whose pale flood they sing their madrigal; 
Grotesquely solemn wait the old buffoons 

To caper in the mimic carnival; 

A warbling chorus makes its blithe advent 

To tell of gardens painted on the props: 

While I await the glittering descent 

Of seven iridescent golden drops. 


What that sestet shall be, only the author may tell.1_ No 
suggestion will come from us. ‘To offer advice would be one 
sure way to lose it forever. In five years I have not invited 
a pupil to write imaginatively on any theme suggested by 
me.” To the question—now no longer heard—What shall I 
write about? there is never an answer. ‘There could be none. 
One writes imaginatively about imaginative experiences; no 
one else can decide in advance what they shall be. So we 
drive them back upon themselves, drive them to search 
within, a boundless field and rich beyond expectation. Per- 
haps that is the main reason for the individual character of 
Lincoln School writing. 

Help toward finding that field, it should go without saying, 
is given in abundance. ‘“‘I can’t tell you what you should 
write about,” is the commonest approach to a new pupil, 
“because I don’t know what you know; but I could tell you 
what I want to write about myself.” Then follows a vivid 
picturing of recent and remote experience, so personal that 
no one else would dream of using the material. ‘“‘That’s 


1That octave turned eventually into Two Sonnets on the Theatre. See page 232. 


2Which is directly opposed to the method employed so successfully in the French schools as 
delightfully depicted in How the French Boy Learns to Write, by Rollo Walter Brown (Harvard, 
1915), and My Class in Composition, by Julien Bezard (Harvard, 1923), but whoever reads these 
<emarkable books with any sense for values knows that the supremely important ee. there 
is not the school program but the gifted artist who touched the very spirit of these French | 
youths, the master teacher. 


36 CREATIVE YOUTH 


the sort of experience I am having, but, of course, you 
wouldn’t know enough about that. Now you—what sort 
of experience have you been having? Where have you 
been? What have you done recently? What do you think 
about most of the time?”’ And so on. 

Eventually—if one does not exact a “composition” every 
Monday morning—something emerges, and, like as not, it 
will be worth waiting for> We waited two months for 
Nigger and Social Life in a Southwest Corral, two of the best 
pieces of transferred experience the school has published. 
The author, I recall, having some foolish belief that he could 
not write, begged for a subject, any subject; we refused, 
amicably, to be sure, to furnish a ready-made theme, but in 
the casual chat that followed, unearthed the Western year. 
Out of that came his only writing of the term. We have 
found few persons able to read those two stories unimpressed; 
yet they are plain unvarnished tales, even crudely written 
in spots, though you might not notice that as you read, for 
the total effect of dropping one imaginatively into the very 
life of an Arizona ranch is pure unpremeditated art. 

Neither theme, then, nor method of treatment may come 
from the teacher! That will be the hardest lesson for 
teachers and parents to learn. But it is the only way if the 
aim is artistry. Painters know this when they teach. Theme 
and treatment are the business of the artist, never of the 
instructor. If that lesson is learned, if teacher and parent 
keep hands off and wait, personality will have a chance to 
express itself; the sign of success will be a refusal to receive 
help, as being both unnecessary and impertinent.2 


VI. Se.r-Expression THROUGHOUT THE SCHOOL 


THE poetic development of the high school has been set in 
a general school environment which is one of the factors that 


1Both were republished in Lincoln Verse, Story, and Essay. 

“It is a very ticklish thing to endeavor in any way to direct so young a gift. It will find by 
instinct its own nourishment; that is my belief.” —WILLIAM ROSE BENET in Foreword to Natha- 
lia Crane’s The Janitor’s Boy and Other Poems. 


SELF-EXPRESSION IN THE SCHOOL 37 


may not be neglected in an attempt to understand the special 
product illustrated in this book. Naturally, the teaching 
staff has been interested in all forms of written and oral self- 
expression; and the method of sympathetic appreciation and 
instruction applies to all who write throughout the school. 
Lincoln Lore has invariably given up a part of its pages to the 
elementary school, where everyone seems to be a poet; and 
the output of the junior high school has been rich enough to 
fill monthly the many mimeographed pages of the Lorette. 
While the Lore has printed only what its editors deem to be 
the best work of the School, the Lorette has opened its pages 
theoretically to all who wish to write; the editors of the 
Lorette, however, regularly decline contributions that are not 
so good as they might be, and, as the amount of material is 
always greater than the available space, judgment is passed 
in favor of what the youthful editors consider the best. 
The Lorette grew out of a pressing necessity. It was not 
possible, without the charge of priggishness, to set up for the 
junior high school the same standards that satisfied the 
senior high school. Yet the younger pupils must have their 
own level of self-expression if there is to be any later growth. 
So the demand for a junior periodical came naturally enough 
and was willingly supplied. 

Further, the upper school may look forward confidently 
to the coming of children who have had their elementary 
training in the Lincoln School; for the spirit of the ele- 
mentary school is to permit the amplest self-realization. A 
beautiful native art flourishes from the first grade on: the 
speech of the children reflects it, as well as their poems 
and prose stories; and the walls are gay with their naive 
canvases. Here as elsewhere there is commendable absence 
of a too dominant teacher leadership; or, rather, it is a 
seeming withdrawal of the teacher, the very best type of 
leadership, for it is never obtrusive or irrelevant or needlessly 
coercive. 


38 CREATIVE YOUTH 


After hearing Christina Rossetti, Ivria, of the first grade, 
writes: 


What is red? 
The sunset’s red 
When we go to bed. 


Michael, boylike, sees another color: 


What is black? 
The smoke is black 


From the chimney stack. 


So on Valentine’s Day, Nathalie writes feelingly, and in 
unheard-of language: 


With love and a start 
I will give you my heart. 


Nathalie, when in the third grade, composes for several 
minutes with the most serious preoccupation, and, having 
finished, tosses the result aside and joins the others. Products 
do not interest these energizing spirits! But a watchful 
teacher gathers it up and it becomes a full-page decoration 
for the Christmas number of the Lore. | 

The fifth grade listens to the reading of a poem which tells 
cf the spot most loved by William Butler Yeats: | 


I will arise now, and go to Innisfree 


I will arise and go now, for always night and day 

I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore 
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavement gray, 
I hear it in the deep heart’s core 


Each child in the class had some spot which he loved more 
than any other and wrote about it. Richard invents a name 


VOL. V 





LINCOLN LORE 


DECEMBER, 1921 





eG) te Christmas ebe wher 
Go W\| Panta was very busy 
ce packing the toys in hfs 
SS ZG sled, ye saw five dolls 
that were not finished. One bad no 
wig, and another doll had no arm, 
aiid others bad no legs, and Santa 
was bery discouraged. But he put 
on the arms and leas without anyp 
grumbling. KE Chet a curious 
thing happened. A great light 
shone in the room, and Santa knelt 
down because he Bnew it was the 
Lord Jesus. Fe RE Br 











Written bp Mathalie Swan 
when she wag in the Chird 
@rade, 


39 





40 CREATIVE YOUTH 


that even his family had never heard of although the place 
itself is dear to them all: 


Tue Back Country 


Two tall trees beside the door 

And the crickets’ shrill chirping; 

The great old-fashioned fireplace inside 
And the playhouse down in the orchard; 
The swimming pool with the cool water 
And the long waving grass; 

The old Back Country I will always love 
Oh, how I wish I were there! 


I had the good fortune to be present in the third grade one 
November morning while the teacher—again it is Miss Cur- 
tis—wrote rapidly on the blackboard the quietly inspired 
words that came from all parts of the room as the pupils 
thought of Thankfulness. What mysterious thing she did 
to put them in so glorious a mood I do not know, and I doubt 
if she herself could give a completely satisfying analysis. 
The effect was simply that of a silent amanuensis; they spoke 
their thankfulness, she wrote; but by some miracle of 
personal influence she had led them to speak out unafraid, 
and the result was poetry. 

A footnote of warning must always be added; for one errs 
if deduction is drawn that our type of creative artistry is 
obtained simply by permitting children to be natural, to do 
as they please, to grow without cultivation or special nourish- 
ment like the lilies of the field. The secret of our results lies 
in the environment which we as teachers skilfully and 
knowingly set up day by day and hour by hour. Children 
do behave naturally, we trust, in the presence of the in- 
fluences that the school consciously brings to bear; they are 
not aware, usually, that our direction is important, but we 
are aware of it at every moment. 

The surface picture of children toiling mightily and with 


SELF-EXPRESSION IN THE SCHOOL 41 


huge interest at worthy tasks has led many an enthusiastic 
reporter astray. In presenting the material given above 
before the New York Society for the Experimental Study of 
Education! I fell unwittingly into the snare myself because 
in the short time that was allotted me I touched only the 
seeming naturalness of the creative effort without indicating 
the means which the teacher must continuously employ, 
particularly in the elementary grades, to keep the creative 
impulses moving toward right productive ends. 

This free creating spirit in the elementary school 1s 
matched in the high school in classes other than English, as is 
so splendidly illustrated in one branch of study by Doctor 
Knowlton in his recent book, Making History Graphic.” 
The inventive ingenuity of these pupils is given unobstructed 
sway in every study, including mathematics; a gently satiric 
article by one of the high-school pupils was accepted for 
publication last year in a magazine devoted exclusively to the 
technical consideration of mathematics. Even the modern 
languages welcome the brush of the artist, and the imagi- 
native skill of the dramatist and the poet, which reference 
gives us just the excuse we were looking for to present the 
work of an eleventh-grade American girl when her fancy 
plays in an alien tongue: 


Quanp JE SoncE A La FRANCE 
Par Beatrice Wadhams 


Quand je songe a la France 
Un étrange sentiment 
Me rend heureux—me charme. 


Petits enfants 


1Reprinted as ‘‘English, an Expression of the Activities of Everyday Life,” in the Journal 
of Educational Method, March, 1923. 

2Making History Graphic, by Daniel C. Knowlton (Scribners, 1925), an account of the use 
of graph, cartoon, illustration, and dramatization in history by pupils of the high-school de- 
partment of the Lincoln School. 

&*The Pursuit of Zero,’”? by Emma Rounds, Mathematics Journal, October, 1924. 


42 CREATIVE YOUTH 


Rose et gris, 
Comme de petits phantomes 
Dansent et rient— 
Le rire de ceux 
Qui bravent les larmes 
Et dans leurs yeux 
Toujours, toujours je vois 
La vraie et belle confiance, 
Qui vient dela foi 
Et de l’espérance. 


VII. THe CLassroom ENVIRONMENT 


Vistrors have found our high-school pupils preparing 
programs of literature for class presentation. At one time 
it might be Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth; at another time the 
sonnet sequences of Sidney and Shakespeare; more fre- 
quently the galaxy of modern British and American versifiers. 
It is then that they have asked eagerly for our course of 
study. Well, we have had the courage to have none. Who 
could tell in advance that a tenth grade would desire to 
equip themselves with the Oxford Book of English Verse and 
make it the basis of a half year’s study? Or that an eleventh 
grade would agree to list the outstanding novels and plays 
for the past two hundred years, and to resolve, liking or not 
liking, to take their stand with educated persons the world 
over by knowing intimately the major representative pro- 
ductions of the past? As teachers we may rest serene, we 
think, if our classes are moving forward, especially if they 
have the powerful stimulus of self-initiation in the right 
direction. 

At present the three upper high-school classes have settled 
themselves into something that looks on the surface like a 
fixed course of literary study. But it represents merely the 
needs and aspirations of those classes in this year of grace; 
time and the hour will doubtless give a different shaping to 
those courses as other classes come up. 


THE CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT 43 


The tenth grade are going through a standard text on the 
history of literature,! slipping along, stopping where neces- 
sary, using it not at all for study but for information and 
reference. Our main concern is with literature itself. As 
illustration for the earlier period we read Puck of Pook’s Hill, 
the chapters “On the Great Wall” and “‘The Winged Hats”’; 
and Lancelot and Elaine from the Idylls of the King. To get 
a better acquaintance with the famed Elizabethans we read 
from Noyes’s Tales of the Mermaid Tavern (A Cotiner of 
Angels and a part of The Golden Hind). In December they 
were lost in the delightful horror of Macbeth, but, with the 
sprightliness of youth, turned to the putting on of the 
Christmas play, The Fourth Dementia, a work of pure non- 
sense written especially for them by the teacher. But that 
will not prevent them from turning back to Shakespeare in 
January when Twelfth Night 1s to be read, and _ possibly 
played, in class. In the meantime they have been reading, 
both in and out of class, the Elizabethan section of Pal- 
grave’s Golden Treasury. ‘This class may not be held here, 
as was the previous tenth grade, who gave the old songs in 
their original settings and made new airs for themselves 
and sang them right lustily. 

The eleventh grade, following undoubtedly the lead of last 
year’s rather brilliant class, are centering on modern verse. 
Committees have divided up the field and are reporting their 
finds daily. Their method is quite simple: to bring to class 
what in their judgment are the best poems of an author or of 
a group of authors and to read them to one another, with only 
so much comment as is needful or suggested by discussion. 
It is a spontaneous and natural exercise, quite un-school-like 
in its general appearance, and always enjoyable. Perhaps 
some of the effect is due to the fact that they have been per- 
mitted to form themselves into a literary society, the Robert 
Frost Club, and to carry on their programs with only such 


1English Literature, by John L. Haney (Harcourt, 1920). 


a CREATIVE YOUTH 


help from the teacher as he may contribute as a fellow 
member. No textbook as such is possible; they range 
through the complete works of the poets under review and 
everlastingly thumb the worn pages of Monroe and Hender- 
son, Wilkinson, Untermeyer, Rittenhouse, Braithwaite, and 
Burton Stevenson.! 

In a similar organization last year the class found it im- 
perative to know the father of modern American poetry, 
Whitman; and it was not long before the whole group were 
refreshing their memories of Shelley, Keats, and even the 
Elizabethans. My notes tell me of the oft-expressed opinion 
that “the only way to appreciate the power and the beauty 
of To a Nightingale, The West Wind, Adonats, or The Eve of 
Saint Agnes is to have first a thorough acquaintanceship 
with the best contemporary verse”? (which means, my guess 
is, that the best poetry is appreciated only after one has had 
experience with the best poetry!). The present class may 
drift in that direction naturally; and they may not. One 
indication is before me: a young girl who has been fascinated 
by The Hound of Heaven has asked if she might not present 
Shelley and Thompson together. “They belong together, 
you know,” she said. “Yes, I do know,” I thought, and 
marveled again at the unaccountable wisdom of these 
free young people. Her pure enthusiasm may start the 
whole pack “down the nights and down the days”; who 
knows? 

The twelfth grade has taken the drama for special study. 
Poetry does come in abundantly, of course; Kreymborg’s 
When the Willow Nods was recently done by one of them with 
exquisite care for the values of the spoken word, and, of 
course, they continue to write verse; but the aim at the outset 
was simply to acquaint themselves with the best drama, 


1The New Poetry, Monroe and Henderson (Macmillan); New Voices, Wilkinson (Macmillan); 
Modern American Poetry, Modern British Poetry, American Poetry Since 1900, Untermeyer 
(Houghton Mifflin); The Little Book of Modern Verse, The Second Book of Modern Verse, Ritten- 
house (Houghton Mifflin); Anthology of Magazine Verse (eleven volumes) Braithwaite (Small, 
Maynard); Home Book of Verse, Stevenson (Holt). 


THE CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT 4S 


Continental, British, and American. Ibsen, Andreyev, 
Sudermann, Galsworthy, Pinero, Moody, Kreymborg, 
O’Neill have already been illustrated by selected dramatic 
readings. Dickinson, Quinn, Leonard, Cohen, Mantel, 
Matthews—collections all—are their main texts... I am 
wondering if they will be in Euripides and Aristophanes be- 
fore long. It may be; they went eagerly to Sir John Martin 
Harvey’s production of Gidipus Rex last year, but they 
divided seriously on the value of the tragedy.? 

For the sake of making doubly clear the sort of literary 
judgment which these pupils exhibit when left free to choose, 
and to indicate their level of literary enjoyment, let me give 
an early section of the programs presented by a combined 
eleventh and twelfth grade when studying contemporary 
poetry. This field is even more interesting to us because 
literary judgments have not been so inevitably set up for 
the pupils as would be the case in any older literature. Be- 
fore that, however, one should note that in this school the 
interest in literature has followed rather than preceded the 
writing of literature. First there were poets and then 
literature appeared in the classroom a live and sincere thing. 
And, further, with all the extensive reading—some pupils 
now read anthologies straight through as other persons read 
books of prose—there seems no discernible imitative touch 
in the self-created verses. Each poet here has his own in- 
dividual song. Imitation may be the sincerest flattery but 


\Chief Contemporary Dramatists, First and Second Series, Dickinson (Houghton Mifflin); 
Representative American Plays, Quinn (Century); Contemporary American Plays, Quinn (Scrib- 
ner); The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays, Leonard (Atlantic Monthly Press) ; One-Act Plays, Cohen 
(Houghton Mifflin); The Best Plays of 1919-1920, 1920-1921, 1921-1922, 1922-1923, 1923- 
1924, Mantel (Small, Maynard); Chief European Dramatists, Matthews (Houghton Mifflin). 


2Writes a tenth-grade boy, ‘‘ We left the theatre with a curious feeling of satisfaction, as if 
the play had quenched some dormant thirst. Probably not many will admit that they ever 
had a thirst (dormant or otherwise) for Greek tragedy, yet at the same time, I doubt if any will 
deny that there was a strangely pleasant reaction after it was over.’’ A girl of the same grade 
writes, ‘‘King CEdipus was a man with whom Fate had played and then had tossed aside, ruined 
and broken. What had he done that, guiltless and unwitting, he should be sucked under such 
a whirlpool of disgrace, misfortune, and sorrow? He had lost all because of nothing—through 
a breath of chance. . . . Somehow, one failed to see a way in which anything could have 
been prevented. It was irrevocable; it was in the fall of the dice! The bitter irony of the thing 
cut one, like the lash of a whip, and one was left with a sense of smallness, of weakness, of hope- 
Jeasness about life in general.’’ 


46 CREATIVE YOUTH 


it is also the sign of the unoccupied mind; he who has learned 
to sing his own note has no need to borrow. 

The programs represent a selection by committees of 
pupils of poems to be presented before the class in their 
literary meetings; the titles and sources were taken down by 
the class secretary and later placed upon the bulletin board 
for reference. I omit the names of committees and readers, 
and the notations on the type of discussion, biographical and 
critical; the point is simply to illustrate the kind of verse 
these pupils believe to be worthy, for the larger purpose of 
gathering here all the data needful for an understanding of 
the school setting out of which the accompanying selections 
of poetry have so naturally come. 

The “volumes of verse” cited represent simply the books 
used as sources for the selections. The poets are given 
in the order in which they were presented among the pro- 
grams of the class. 


Joun MaseEFIELL 


Volumes of Verse: 
Salt Water Ballads 
Dauber 


Selections: 

Prayer 

Vagabond 

Seekers 

Laugh and Be Merry 
Captain Stratton’s Fancy 
Consecration 
Sing a Song of Shipwreck 
‘Dauber 


CarRL SANDBURG 


Volumes of Verse: 
Chicago Poems 
Smoke and Steel 


THE CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT 


Selections: 
‘The Fog 
Aprons of Silence 
Helga 
Night-Stuff 
The Crapshooters 
Wind-flower Leaf 
Up-stream 


WitiiaM Rose BENET 


Volumes of Verse: 
Merchants from Cathay 
Moons of Grandeur 
The Great White Wall 
The Burglar of the Zodiac 
The Falconer of God 


Selections: 
The Smooth Sliding Mincius 
Primum Mobile : 
The Falconer of God 
The World’s Desire 
People 
Merchants from Cathay 


ALFRED Noyes 


Volumes of Verse: 
Collected Poems (‘Two volumes) 


Selections: 

- The Barrel-Organ 
‘Forty Singing Seamen 
The Avenue of the Allies 
The Union 
Beyond Death 
Our Lady of the Twilight 
Ballad of the Easier Way 
Searchlights 
To a Pessimist 


47 


48 CREATIVE YOUTH 


EpNA St. VINCENT MILLAY 


Volumes of Verse: 
Renascence 
A Few Figs from Thistles 
Second April 


Selections: 
Renascence 
Eel Grass 
The Penitent 
‘The Unexplorer 
God’s World 
Wet Rocks 
Travel 
Persephone 
The First Fig 
The Second Fig 
Thursday 


Amy LowELu 


Volumes of Verse: 
Pictures of the Floating World 
Sword Blades and Poppies 
A Dome of Many-Colored Glass 


Selections: 
The Fool Errant 
The Road to Avignon 
Mirage 
The Pleiades 
The Way 
Suggested by a Cover of a Volume of Keats’ Poems 
Laqueries (4) 
Ombre Chinoise 
A Decade 
Grotesque 
Good Gracious! 
Lilacs 
The Madonna of the Evening Flowers 
Patterns 


THE CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT 49 


ARTHUR GUITERMAN 


Volumes of Verse: 
The Mirthful Lyre 
The Laughing Muse 


Selections: 
Philosophers 
Survival of the Fittest 
Rules for Editorial Writing 
The Quest of the Ribband 
Strictly Germ-Proof 
The Passionate Suburbanite to His Love 
This Is She 
Logic 
Fiction 
June 
Mere Literature 


James OppENHEIM 


Volumes of Verse: 
Monday Morning and Other Poems 
Songs for a New Age 
The Book of Self 
The Solitary 


Selections: 
The Excursion Boat (A part) 
Saturday Night (A part) 
The Slave 
Let Nothing Bind You 
Tasting Earth 
Jottings 
Arrival and Departure 
Listen | 
I Could Write the Psalms Again 
The Runner of the Skies 
Self (Parts II, LX, XIII) 
Memories of Whitman and Lincoln 
Mist 
Rain Song 


Bo CREATIVE YOUTH 


VACHEL LINDSAY 


Volumes of Verse: 
Golden Whales of California 
The Congo and Other Poems 
The Chinese Nightingale 


Selections: 
The Potatoes’ Dance 
General William Booth Enters into Heaven 
Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight 
Niagara 
Yankee Doodle 
Alexander Campbell 
Daniel 
Apple Blossom Snow Blues 
Congo 
Litany of the Heroes 
The Chinese Nightingale 


SIDNEY LANIER 


Volume of Verse: 
Collected Poems 


Selections: 
The Marshes of Glynn 
How Love Looked for Hell 
The Song of the Chattahoochee 
The Mocking Bird 


Tue Diat Poets! 


Selections: 
Sherwood Anderson 
The Dumb Man 
The Man with the Trumpet 
Dudley Poore 


Marigold Pendulum 





1So named, by the four boys who made the report, on the ground that these were the t of 
ce who are found mainly in the Dial. They were not particularly interested in Eliot or 

Pua although next year they had quite a go with Kreymborg; Anderson held their 
attention, but Poore’s Marigold Pendulum fascinated. They read it many times and included 
it later in a program of favorites. a 


THE CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT 51 


Alfred Kreymborg 
Adagio, A Duet 
Dirge 
flees Eliot 
Burbank with a Baedeker, Bleinstein with a Cigar 
La Figlia che Piange 


MatrHEw ARNOLD* 


Seleciions: 
The Buried Life 
Lines Written in Westminster Gardens 
A Summer Night 


Self-Dependence 
The Forsaken Mermaid 
Requiescat 
Watt WHITMAN 
Selections: 


To a Certain Civilian 

To Him Who Was Crucified 
Song of Myself 

As I Pondered in Silence 
To You 

The World Below the Brine 


Epna St. Vincent MILLAy 


Volume of Verse: 
The Harp Weaver? 


Seleciions: 
My Heart Being Hungry 
Feast 
Souvenir 
Departure 
A Visit to the Asylum 


INo other explanation was given for the inclusion of the ms of Matthew Arnold in this list 
than the statement by the chairman of the committee, ‘‘He isn’t exactly a modern poet, when 
you come to look when he was born, but we like him and think he will bear comparison with the 


others, and anyway, it will be a good thing to see if there is anything so different between an 
older poet and those writing to-day.” 


2New that season. 


$2 CREATIVE YOUTH 
The Curse 


Keen 

The Pond 

The Ballad of the Harp Weaver 

I Know I Am but Summer to Your Heart 
Oh, Oh, You Will Be Sorry for That Word! 
I See So Clearly How My Similar Fears 
How Healthily Their Feet Upon the Floor 


RupDYARD KIPLING 


Volume of Verse: 
The Truce of the Bear 


Selections: 
The Story of Ung-Kay 
The Sea and the Hills 
The Truce of the Bear 
Amour de Voyage 
The Liner 
My Rival 
Road Song of the Bandar-Log 
L’Envoi 


Recessional 


O.iverR HERForpD 


Volumes of Verse: 
This Giddy World 
The Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten 
The Laughing Muse 
The Mythological Zoo 


elections: 
The Friendly Cow 
The World at Large 
The Fauna of Australia 
The Chimpanzee 
The Early Worm 
The Mirror 
Nine Lives 
Catnip 


THE CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT 53 


The Prodigal Centipede 
An American Anthology 
Mrs. Seymore Fentolin 
The Belated Violet 

The Sphinx 

The Salamander 

The Mermaid 

The Harpy 

The Biotaur 


ADELAIDE CRAPSEY 
Volume of Verse: 


Verse (1915S) 


Selections: 
Cinquaines 
November Night 
Moon-Shadow 
Winter 
Night Winds 
The Warning 
Rapunzel 
The Vendor’s Song 
The Fiddling Lad 
To the Dead in the Graveyard Underneath My Window 
To the Man Who Goes Seeking Immortality Bidding Him 
Look Nearer Home 
Perfume of Youth 


JAMES ELRoy FLECKER 


Volumes of Verse: 
The Old Ships 


Hassan 


Selections: 
Prologue from Hassan 
Epilogue from Hassan 
Riouperoux 
The War Song of the Saracens 
Stillness 
The Queen’s Song 
The Old Ships 


54 CREATIVE YOUTH 


Ratpo Hopcson 


Selections: 
Eve 
Gloom 
Ghoul-Care 
The Bull 
The Bells of Heaven 
The Bird Catcher 
Reason Has Moons 
God Loves an Idle Rainbow as Much as Labouring Seas 


OrrIcK JOHNS 


Volume of Verse: 
Asphalt 


Selections: 
Country Rhymes 
Little Things 
The Interpreter 
Second Avenue 
The Worker 
The Loom Girl 
Gold 
Song for the Little Mistress 


RoBERT FRost 


Volume of Verse: 
New Hampshire! 


Selections: 
New Hampshire 
Nothing Gold Can Stay 
The Star-Splitter 
Dust of Snow 


1Already familiar with the previous volumes of Frost they were eager to seize the latest 
volume when it came into the library and make a program of it. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy 
Evening became a favorite; Good-bye and Keep Cold was inveigled into a commencement address 
and turned delightfully to represent the parting of class and school. To catch the full sophis- 
tication of this spirited class one should picture our dismay and our fears at their parting from 
us and at the same time recall the final lines of the poem, ‘‘But something has to be left to 


THE CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT 


The Runaway 

Fire and Ice 

Boundless Moment 

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening 
The Axe-Helve 

To Earthward 

The Valley’s Singing Day 

A Brook in the City 

The Need of Being Versed in Country Things 
The Two Witches 


55 


Good-bye and Keep Cold 
The Kitchen Chimney. 
~ For Once, Then, Something 


Wild Grapes 


PROGRAM OF FAVORITES-SO-FAR 


John Masefield 
Alfred Noyes 


William Rose Benét 


Sea Fever 
Our Lady of the Twilight 
The World’s Desire 


Edna St. Vincent Millay The Ballad of the Harp Weaver 


Adelaide Crapsey 


Dudley Poore 
Robert Frost 


Amy Lowell 


The Pond 

Your Face Is Like a Chamber 

Feast 

I Know I am But Summer to Your Heart 
Oh, Oh, You’ll Be Sorry for That Word! 
The Vendor’s Song 

The Fiddling Lad 

Rapunzel 

The Warning 

Marigold Pendulum 

The Witch of Coos 

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening 
Good-bye and Keep Cold 

Madonna of the Evening Flowers 


Edna St. Vincent Millay Two Figs 


Walter de la Mare 


Vachel Lindsay 


Walier de la Mare 


Vachel Lindsay 


The Listeners 

The Congo 

The Lamp-Lighter 

General William Booth Enters into 
Heaven 


56 CREATIVE YOUTH 


Matthew Arnold The Forsaken Mermaid 
Ralph Hodgson The Gypsy Girl 
Ghoul-Care 
Eve 


Edna St. Vincent Millay Recuerdo 
Portrait by a Neighbor 
The Unexplorer 

Robert Frost Birches 

James Oppenheim Let Nothing Bind You 


The program of “Favorites-so-far” took three days to 
read, but they had no desire to shorten it. Some of the 
favorites named above had not been given in the regular 
programs but, discovered later, were passed around until 
they had won a place here. Others that might have been 
named here had already been used in a general program be- 
fore the whole school a little while before. I have not in- 
cluded original poetry that came up naturally in these pro- 
grams of contemporary verse; many of the poems printed in 
this volume had their first public reading in the literary 
setting of the major living poets. 

These programs led us in all literary directions. Right 
at the beginning we stopped to know more about Masefield, 
Someone told about The Widow in the Bye-Street, with the 
result that it circulated continuously from hand to hand dur- 
ing the whole term. A word about Nan and we were off in a 
class reading of that bit of grisly horror The Camden Wonder. 
They found out then what literature could do to one! Much 
more of Sandburg was read, in whole or in part, than the 
program records; I have noted a long discussion that followed 
Cool Tombs (which they did not like) and Chicago (pleasing 
the unconventional immensely in defense of which they grew 
rather warm). ‘The teacher, who could not always be de- 
nied, contributed with side excursions into his favorite 
Elizabethans, Romanticists, and Pre-Raphaelites, even 
managing to bring in Villon and Baudelaire. Poe as a 


THE CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT 67 


modern imagist was one theme; the impish and provocative 
personality of Edna Millay—as judged solely by her self- 
revelation in poetry, of course—was another. One day the 
poetry was set aside while we dipped into The Doctor’s 
Dilemma, but we did not stop until we had spent two days 
debating a far-reaching question of morals, Was Louis 
Dubedat worth saving? (In a straw vote the first day the 
Ayes had it overwhelmingly, but the final decision was a two- 
third vote of No.) A most fruitful hour was spent in recog- 
nizing the distinctive qualities in the blank verse as used by 
Shakespeare, Masefield, and Frost (My word for it, a genuine 
self-started interest and without even a tincture of literary 
pedagogy!) which led to the discovery of the varying texture 
of the sonnet as employed by Shakespeare, Wordsworth, 
Rossetti, and such moderns as Edna Millay and Rupert 
Brooke. 

Visiting graduates—they always came to class with every 
college holiday—and visiting teachers were often invited 
to take part; sometimes they made their own selections, but 
more frequently the chairman of the committee would 
assign a reading. Books were handed here and there to 
likely readers. ‘Oh, let Liliane read that!’’ one would cry, 
and a half-dozen other knowing ones would exult, “Oh, yes! 
Let Liliane read that!’ And Liliane, nothing loth, would 
take a moment to go through the selection silently, and then 
would read “that.” And sometimes there would be a sud- 
den general invitation for the teacher to read, a thing that 
never failed to send a thrill through him (“Flesh and blood! 
That’s all I’m made of!’’), and he would do his very best, as 
eager for approval as the next one. 

Second readings are common, I note. They got to know 
that it takes more than one hearing to comprehend a good 
poem. The best compliment to a reader came to be the 
general cry, “Oh, read it again!’ I note also that after a 
while a pupil might begin a difficult poem with the simple 


58 CREATIVE YOUTH 


announcement, “I shall have to read this one twice.” We 
discovered, too, that some poems are spoiled by a single 
extraneous word while others demand considerable expla- 
nation or setting in advance. Often we needed to tell first 
everything that was in the poem, so that our minds could 
then rest more comfortably upon the art of the poet. Tech- 
nique in presenting the difficult printed word grew, you see, 
as we went along. Problems of enunciation became com- 
pelling; we found we were forced to sound the final letter 
with artificial distinctness, to “English” certain medial 
consonants (particularly ¢), to set off unusual words with 
pauses, and so on; and we learned to color the vowels, to 
use varying voice levels, to keep or suppress the swing of the 
rhythm, all depending upon the effect we wished to produce. 

At the end of the term we had a Reading Party. Invi- 
tations were hurried forth. The room was decorated with 
flowers, there was an expressed desire to kill every suggestion 
of schoolroom, even to the point of hiding the blackboards 
with batiks!—and someone contributed a huge plate of nut 
fudge. We read—and munched!—steadily for fifty minutes. 
Old favorites, among them Marigold Pendulum, Stopping by 
Woods on a Snowy Evening, Good-bye and Keep Cold, Eve, were 
given with that strange, rich effect which comes only with 
the rehearing of fine music; and a dozen original poems came 
forth as a special grace, Beyond and The Clockmaker’s Song, 
for example; even the teacher, suppressing a native shyness in 
such matters, read out of his own private store a group that 
might have been called Poems Written in Very Early Youth. 

The effect of these hours, everyone knows, cannot be put 
into words. The hundreds of distinguished visitors from 
all parts of the world who have sat with us from time to time 
as we shared these literary experiences, have paid tribute 
in many a vibrant phrase and, evidently, have spread some 


1Could it have been the teacher? Taking literature from its stained-glass repository and 
subjecting it to the belittling association of ‘‘fudge’’! 


THE CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT 59 


of the contagion of their pleasure to others; but those who 
have not been present with us will ever miss the first fine 
careless rapture. One effect reached the home almost im- 
mediately, which brought parents to see what was happening. 
“TI came to tell you,’ whispered one mother who had 
beckoned me outside the door, “that my big boy is walking 
about the house reading aloud from Palgrave! My boy! 
Think of it! And he has been reading to me! Telling me 
about Wordsworth! Me! And out of my own book, too, 
the one I used in college and loved! And I let him tell me, 
and assume—oh, such an awful ignorance! What has hap- 
pened to him so suddenly? He is so big. And his voice is 
changing. And he is so funny in his terrible earnestness. 
Oh! I want to laugh out loud. And daren’t. And I am 
so pleased. To see this happen to him. Like that, you 
know!”? She waved her hand airily. “And we thought 
he would never be interested in anything but gas engines. 
It really is too ridiculous! Oh, you don’t know how funny 
he is and how proud Iam! So I thought I would come up 
and tell you!” | 

It was not quite possible to sit unmoved among these 
mirthfully serious young people. One might judge the 
effect upon the so-called un-literary pupil—if such there 
be!—by the havoc played upon the feelings of the adults. 
Here is one auditor who is willing to admit that he learned 
about literature from them—more than he ever got out of 
any college class in the subject; many a time those hours have 
sent him eagerly off to the library and have kept him nerv- 
ously up at nights scribbling away as if the Fiend himself 
had ordered a written assignment for the morrow! 


VIII. Lirerary JUDGMENT 


Goop literary judgment is not different from other types of 
coming to a conclusion, in that it is based upon a fairly long 
and varied experience with the good and bad of the thing it 


60 CREATIVE YOUTH 


presumes to judge. Experience alone is not sufficient, to be 
sure, but it is common sense to believe that opinion without 
knowledge is surely worthless. 

Now the schools generally are built upon the notion— 
opposing common sense in this and in other matters—that 
judgment comes before knowledge. To be sure, it is the 
judgment of others mainly, not the pupil’s own; for gener- 
ations the classroom recitation has exacted answers from 
young persons concerning matters of which they could not 
possibly know enough to reply unassisted. To aid them the 
textbook was the storehouse for the opinions required, and 
the high scholar was he who knew the greatest number of 
textbook answers. ‘‘Who,”’ the teacher of the schools might 
reasonably ask, “were the two most important writers of the 
New England Group?” As the book answer is “Longfellow. 
and Whittier,” no prudent child would venture to dispute. 
Although a good case could be made for Lowell, Emerson, or 
Hawthorne, a genuine exercise of literary judgment, under 
the usual classroom régime, would be disastrous to what the 
school has for centuries called “scholarship.” 

The college puts almost its whole emphasis upon knowing 
the opinions of others, the lecturer’s opinions first, then the 
judgment of the critics. In college it is more important, for 
examination purposes, to know Horace Howard Furness than 
to know William Shakespeare. I recall a course in English 
Poetry from the Death of Byron that was too full of the study 
of opinions about the poets to permit time to read the poets 
themselves. 

“What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild- 
fowl?” asks Feste, the Fool, testing Malvolio’s sanity. 

“That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a 
bird,” answers Malvolio from his dark dungeon. 

And Feste, ‘‘ What thinkest thou of his opinion?” 

“I think nobly of the soul,’’ cries honest Malvolio, ‘‘and 
no way approve his opinion.” ; 


LITERARY JUDGMENT 61 


“Fare thee well,” says Feste sadly. ‘‘ Remain thou still 
in darkness: thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras ere 
I will allow of thy wits; and fear to kill a woodcock lest thou 
dispossess the soul of thy grandam. Fare thee well.” 

Although a Fool makes the test of Malvolio’s wits, the 
above procedure has been the program of the recitation since 
Noah was a sailor; thou shalt hold the opinion of Blank ere 
the school allow of thy understanding. 

Now the Lincoln School is not so much interested that its 
pupils should know what others think as it is to give its pupils 
continuous opportunity to grow in thinking. Expression of 
opinion, therefore, of point of view, of deliberated judgment, 
is one of the commonest of pupil activities, but it comes out 
of pupil experience mainly. Often this experience leads 
naturally to an extensive reading of the authorities, the 
conscious aim, in fact, of all the academic teaching; then we 
get something of the flavor of genuine scholarship as dif- 
ferentiated from “book-learning.”’ | 

A single hour in the Lincoln School would show that here is 
freedom to think and abundant exercise in that freedom; 
that child expression is based upon child experience; that 
to answer “right”’ is to speak out of the fullness of living, not 
solely out of a book but out of life itself. One feels the free- 
dom even from language self-consciousness; the thought 
follows a naturai child form, clumsy and even comic from an 
adult standpoint, but adequate always for the end in view. 
Two fears are notoriously absent, the fear of not saying the 
right thing, and the fear of not speaking the correct set of 
words. — aN 

The main result is to uncheck the flow of Lae ee cA Pact 
if my answers depend solely upon my own experience I speak 
out freely and without fear, but if I am held wholly to think- 
ing based upon another’s experience, or to an alien and un- 
familiar form of speech, I am robbed atthe start of the very 
instruments of independent judgment.\ Now this attitude 

\ 


62 CREATIVE YOUTH 


of the school toward self-expression is definitely connected 
with literary appreciation, as I hope to show. 

My first experience with these independent thinkers came 
with an eighth-grade class. I had. suggested the possible 
reading of The Last of the Mohicans, but was met with a 
voluble protest from those that had tried it and had found it 
wanting. “Everybody says ‘Read The Last of the Mohicans,’ 
and there’s nothing worse!”’ was the dictum of one boy. 
However, I found a minority who insisted that the book was 
‘wonderful and exciting.” The debate that followed was a 
perfect example of self-expression gone slightly mad, largely 
self-righteous and recriminatory, each side accusing the 
other of a sad absence of good taste and literary judgment 
(I translate freely); but, I noted, it had a fine ring of honesty. 
Here was a time-honored literary dispute, clashing as only 
perfect opposites can. 

To settle the matter we read the book in class, rapidly as 
one would read any story, with little comment as we went 
along. Although we made a slightly abridged version for the 
sake of time, we gave seven full class periods to the reading, 
for we were not only building up the material for an exercise 
in literary judgment, but we were possibly settling the 
question for these young people of Cooper, Scott, Dickens, 
Thackeray, and the literary dicta of their elders generally. 

At times there was smiling superiority, or mild interest; at 
other times, outright laughter at melodrama whose trick of 
illusion had failed, or at the absurdly heroic and malapropos 
speeches of what Cooper called his ‘‘females”’; but the long 
fight in the Island of Caves caught them as perfectly as 
writer ever desires to trap reader, and every word of Hawk- 
eye, the scout, was received with marks of sure approval. 

I use the words of various spokesmen, which I noted at the 
time, to give a summary of their final unanimous conclusion: 
(1) “He didn’t know anything about women.” ‘“‘Those girls 
are just sticks; you can’t get up any sympathy for them.” 





LITERARY JUDGMENT 63 


(2) “The conversation is silly, except where Hawkeye talks.” 
““Hawkeye is the only real character in the whole book.” 
(3) “The Indians aren’t real—just book Indians.”’ (4) “But 
the fights are real.” “Especially the battle on the Island.” 
“That was perfect—you could see it.” (5) “The fights with 
the Indians and Hawkeye—that makes it worth reading.” 
“But without that it would be pretty wooden.” 

Is this good literary judgment on a writer so eminent as 
James Fenimore Cooper? Well, it agrees substantially with 
the conclusions of his greatest contemporary critic, James 
Russell Lowell, who writes—I read them the bit to stir their 
pride—in 4 Fable for Critics: 


Here’s Cooper, who’s written six volumes to show 
He’s as good as a lord: well, let’s grant that he’s so; 
If a person prefer that description of praise, 

Why, a coronet’s certainly cheaper than bays; 

But he need take no pains to convince us he’s not 
(As his enemies say) the American Scott. 

Choose any twelve men, and let C. read aloud 

That one of his novels of which he’s most proud, 
And l’ll lay any bet that, without ever quitting 
Their box, they’d be all, to a man, for acquitting. 
He has drawn you one character, though, that is new, 
One wildflower he’s plucked that is wet with the dew 
Of this fresh Western world, and, the thing not to mince, 
He has done naught but copy it ill ever since; 

His Indians, with proper respect be it said, 

Are just Natty Bumpo daubed over with red, . . . 
And his other men-figures are clothes upon sticks, 
The dernier chemise of a man in a fix, 

(As a captain besieged, when his garrison’s small, 
Sets up caps upon poles to be seen o’er the wall) 
And the women he draws from one model don’t vary, 
All sappy as maples and flat as prairie. . 


Don’t suppose I would underrate Cooper’s abilities, 
If I thought you’d do that, I’d feel very ill at ease; 
The men who have given one character life 

And objective existence, are not very rife, 


64 CREATIVE YOUTH - 


You may number them all, both prose-writers and singers, 
Without overrunning the bounds of your fingers, 

And Natty won’t go to oblivion quicker 

Than Adams the parson or Primrose the vicar. 


As literary programs organized by pupils are almost a 
daily part of our high-school English work, judgment as to 
literary worth is a constant requirement., Committees sit 
literally in judgment as they read, selecting and rejecting 
to secure representative work for class presentation. At 
these times no one seems to think of “looking up the authori- 
ties”’ or of seeking a teacher’s opinion as a substitute for his 
own. Here is the thing of prime importance: they know 
that belief must come from conviction and not from au- 
thority. That is the essential mark of the training of the 
Lincoln School from its very first grade} And if one can 
conceive the paradox of an orderly obedient group living 
comfortably under authorities that they respect and follow, 
a group that at the same time is encouraged always to think 
freely and courageously for itself, then one has the true pic- 
ture of opposing social forces harmonized by good sense. 

If we are studying verse, then verse is the thing, not books 
on verse unless they are clearly indicated by the study; if we 
are studying plays, then the play isthe thing. At the proper 
time the authorities come in, but always after experience has 
made the authorities understandable. Untermeyer’s 4mer- 
ican Poetry Since 1900, and his prefaces generally, are quoted 
frequently in class discussion, but not finally and with awe, 
rather as corroborative of individual judgment or in outright 
disagreement. The pupils concur with him, I note, in his 
evaluation of Robert Frost as at the top of contemporary 
American poetry, but they believe that he has rated Edwin 
Arlington Robinson too high; and while they admit that 
Untermeyer may be right, because Robinson is perhaps too 
deep for them, yet they do not on that account go against 
the best light they have. 


LITERARY JUDGMENT 65 


In a recreation period this year I dropped beside a boy 
who was deep in Huneker’s Iconoclasts. I knew he was pre- 
paring a report to the class on 4 Doll’s House—his own idea— 
and I was curious to see if he had needed to go to a book to 
find out what to think. 

He read on for a few minutes and then closed the volume 
satisfied. ‘‘He missed it,” he said. 

“What did Huneker miss?” I asked, picking up the book 
and examining it, to preserve a casual air. 

“That play falls down at the end,” he spoke up warmly, 
*‘and he never sees it. Nora has three children. When she 
leaves them, the play ‘goes out’—for me. It don’t matter 
what she leaves them for; she had three children, and if she 
can walk right out of the house for good and not care what 
becomes of them, then I don’t care what becomes of her. 
The play breaks up right there. And anybody’d feel that 
way. Now, Sudermann knew better than that. He wouldn’t 
have done a thing like that.” 

‘‘What would Sudermann have done?” I ask, but without 
appearing to probe. 

“Take Magda, for instance. Magda comes home, a big 
success, after having been put out of the house when she was 
achild. Her father was the one that had put her out. Maybe 
he shouldn’t have done it, but he thought he was doing right. 
Anyway, she comes back now, rich and a great opera singer, 
and the father wants her to stay. That’s the fight—between 
Magda and the father. The father is a hard one, but, in a 
way, he loves her. And, in a way, she loves him. It’s 
pretty even. You could decide either way up to the end. 
Well, she wobbles back and forth and then makes up her 
mind to go, and it kills the father. Your sympathies are 
for both of them. 

“Well, you couldn’t feel that way if it had been her 
mother; no matter how bad her mother had treated her. 
Sudermann know that. It’s the way we all feel. You can’t 


66 CREATIVE YOUTH 


help feeling that way or argue about it. So Sudermann gives 
her a stepmother. In 4 Doll’s House Sudermann wouldn't 
have had them her own children, but Helmer’s by another 
wife, or he’d have made them adopted children. Strindberg 
plans everything too, even to the old man’s death—look at 
The Father (have you ever read that?) it fits like a glove— 
he plans everything out so that it seems all right when it 
happens. Ibsen didn’t do that in 4 Doll’s House, and this 
fellow’’— pointing to the book—“‘what’s his name?” 

“Huneker. He has a considerable repute as a critic.” 

“He has, eh? Well, he missed one there.” 

The point is not necessarily to approve of the young man’s 
findings, but to exhibit his relentless thinking on a matter 
of literary technique, to see him keep fearlessly along his own 
line and within his own limits of knowledge. 

Again I must issue the caution that youth is not here per- 
mitted to express opinions merely. The world does that on 
every street corner, and if there is any gain in the process it is 
surely haphazard and fortuitous. The school differs from 
the world in that it presents even the material upon which 
opinion is expressed, it varies it to meet the growing needs 
of self-expression, takes advantage of its errors of fact and 
judgment—and of manner!—for educational purposes purely 
and gives it, finally, the kind of exercise that makes it a better 
and better instrument for self-improvement. And all this it 
does in the modern technique of the teacher’s art, so im- 
perceptibly—rarely by outright correction and reproof—as 
not to frighten off even the shyest of aspiring youth. There- 
fore we treat every opinion with respect, however ridiculous 
it may seem sometimes to us who are older and presumably 
wiser—with the same respect as a physician would consider 
a confessed symptom—and thereby we make it easy in our 
presence to speak out sincerely and disinterestedly. Out- 
spoken sincerity we must have, for that is where the new 
education begins. 


LITERARY JUDGMENT 67 


This is the explanation, in my best judgment, of the clear 
perception of literary values which visitors so often remark in 
the discussion and comment that go on daily in most of the 
classes of the high school. Professor Abbott reports one of 
his graduate students as saying, after an observation trip to 
the school, “I thought I knew considerable about Amy 
Lowell, but those pupils taught me something new in the 
sincerity of their approach and in the richness of feeling they 
extract from her.poetry.””. Mr. Henry James Forman, after 
listening recently to a discussion, at times hilarious, of a 
fanciful scheme for rating authors ancient and modern, 
remarked, “They speak with such sure good sense; they have 
a standard that is both high and genuine; and yet they are 
not at all snobbishly literary. It is a marvelously healthy 
atmosphere for a young person to be in.”’ 

The explanation lies, then, in securing, first, a wide and 
varied experience with all kinds of literature, and, then, in 
permitting, without fear of rebuke, the freest expression of 
likes and dislikes. So I could rejoice recently when the elev- 
enth grade broke into laughter over what they conceived to 
be the puerilities of certain late poems of Alfred Noyes. A 
storm of derision swept them; they read and broke down with 
laughter, affected exactly as we all were by the unintended 
comedy at the revival of the 1845 serious play Fashion. 

The effect of these honest gustos was bewildering to one 
teacher-visitor. Her face remained grimly disapproving. 
“T should think,” she told me in parting, “that they might 
have shown more respect to Mr. Noyes. Surely he is a better 
judge of poetry than any of us.”’ 

Well, ishe? The eleventh grade felt that they had caught 
one of their favorite poets nodding and they had never been 
taught to conceal their thinking. ‘‘Would you have them 
show respect if they did not feel respect?” I asked her. 
She hesitated but answered firmly, “Yes, I would,” but 
added, “‘certainly in the schoolroom.”’ 


68 CREATIVE YOUTH 


Now, isn’t that just what has been the matter with the 
schoolroom these many years! But let us examine the facts 
of the case in question, to see if we cannot make it exhibit 
once more the mode of approach that has given our pupils 
real power in literary discrimination, with its consequent 
effect upon their own literary expression. 

Two committees had elected to report on Alfred Noyes, 
a poet they had been familiar with from the early years when 
they read Drake, and Tales of the Mermaid Tavern, and Sher- 
wood. ‘The first group had given us the well-known Forty 
Singing Seamen, The Highwayman, and several of the more 
serious short poems like In the Cool of the Evening. The 
second committee had distributed typed copies of its se- 
lections to readers previously chosen and was about to begin, 
when a strange thing happened. | 

One of the most able readers rose timidly and began to read 
in an inaudible voice, but she sat down after a line or two, 
obviously confused. It was a new experience for us; and as 
stage fright in the classroom is really unknown, I hastened 
to her, fearing illness. But all she said was, “‘I’m ashamed 
to read it—it is so bad.” 

“No worse than this one,” came a calm, assuring voice from 
another reader. She waved her typed copy. 

“Tt can’t really be as bad as this,’ remarked another 
reader, exhibiting her paper. 

Of course, we read the poems to see what there could be in 
them to bring out such adverse opinions where we had ex- 
pected nothing of the sort. Well, their commonplace charac- 
ter was so patent as to be amusing. “Moon” was rhymed 
with “‘June’”’ amid amazingly trite sentiment; there was a 
childlike discovery of ‘‘the heart of a rose,” and other clichés 
that had already been laughed out of the young poets in that 
class. To see a veteran seriously falling into errors that they 
had discarded was, I suppose, the meat of their comedy. 

I preserved one comment. A boy remarked, as we 


LITERARY JUDGMENT 69 


gathered for a moment at the close of the period (to straighten 
out our faces!), ““How could a man write stuff like that, a 
man who had done such fine things as Forty Singing Seamen 
and The Coiner of Angels and Our Lady of the Twilight !” 
How, indeed. ‘That is the puzzle of the artist; but my own 
delight, I must confess, is that he did do them, for it gave 
me an excellent test of the literary taste of that group. Now 
I knew it could not be stampeded by a great name. 

The next day I was able to bring partial confirmation of 
their right to question the literary judgment of their superior. 
Two critics whose authority is not easily disputed, John 
Erskine and William Rose Benét, had that very month 
censored the English poet for the same qualities that this 
class had discovered unassisted. Professor Erskine headed 
his critique “Arrested Development,” while Mr. Benét in 
his title had asked ironically, “What Kind of a Noyes ett 

Further confirmation comes from the kind of literature 
they really value. This same class has just completed a 
group anthology of modern poets, the result of a year’s study 
in which approximately two thousand poems were reviewed 
in committees. Of this number about five hundred were 
considered worthy of a public reading. In the final judgment 
two hundred or more were discarded, while the remainder 
were sorted by the slow process of discussion and class voting 
into three classes: Class I, the best, fourteen poems; Class II, 
poems of superior merit, twenty-six in number; and Class 
III, good verse worthy of a place in a permanent collection. 

The titles of the slender list of distinguished poems repre- 
sented in their two upper groups are worthy of presenting here 
for the light they shed upon the literary environment which 
these young persons would set up for themselves—for there 
was a complete absence of teacher dictation—when left/ 
quite free to choose. 





1“ Arrested Development,”’ by John Erskine, the New York Herald Tribune Books, Jan. 11, 
ar hes Kind of a Noyes—?” by William Rose Benét, Saturday Review of Literature, 
an. 24, ; ‘ 


70 CREATIVE YOUTH 


Crass I: William Rose Benét, The Falconer of God, The 
florse Thief; Adelaide Crapsey, Triad; Robert Frost, Mend- 
ing Wall, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening; Ralph 
Hodgson, Eve; Sidney Lanier, The Marshes of Glynn; Vachel 
Lindsay, The Chinese Nightingale; Amy Lowell, Patterns; 
Edna St. Vincent Millay, The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver; 
William Vaughn Moody, Gloucester Moors; Ezra Pound, 
A Ballad for Gloom; Dudley Poore, Marigold Pendulum; 
Francis Thompson, The Hound of Heaven. 

Crass II: William Rose Benét, The Asylum; Rupert 
Brooke, The Dead, The Great Lover, The Soldier; Nathalia 
Crane, My Husbands; Adelaide Crapsey, The Warning; 
H. D., Oread, The Pool; Walter de la Mare, The Listeners; 
Robert Frost, Birches, Good-bye and Keep Cold, The Road Not 
Taken, Wild Grapes; A. E. Housman, From Far, from Eve 
and Morning; Orrick Johns, Wild Plum; Alfred Kreymborg, 
Lhe Tree; Vachel Lindsay, The Congo, The Leaden-Eyed; 
John Masefield, Sea Fever; Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman; 
Carl Sandburg, Cool Tombs, Fish Crier, Fog, Grass; Alan 
Seeger, I Have a Rendezvous with Death; R. L. Stevenson, 
Requiem. ¥ 

Crass III: Of the two hundred or more in Class III many 
poems had enthusiastic advocates for a higher rating, particu- 
larly these as listed with their authors: Richard Adlington, 
Lhe Poplar; Rupert Brooke, Grantchester; Hilda Conkling, 
Butterfly, Lilacs; T. A. Daly, Mia Carlotta; Bliss Carman, 
Vagabond Song; Rose Fyleman, Alms for Autumn; Joyce 
Kilmer, Trees; John Masefield, 4 Consecration; Edgar Lee 
Masters, Silence, Anne Rutledge; Alice Meynell, The Lady 
of the Lambs; David Morton, Symbol; Alfred Noyes, Forty 
Singing Seamen; Edwin Arlington Robinson, The Master; 
Sara Teasdale, Barter. 

The three poems that follow, Stopping by Woods On a 
Snowy Evening, by Robert Frost, Eve, by Ralph Hodgson, 
and Marigold Pendulum, by Dudley Poore, have received the 


LITERARY JUDGMENT ms 


tribute of many rereadings in the eleventh- and twelfth- 
grade classes. Found by the pupils themselves in their 
searches among the modern poets, they may be considered as 
illustrating one of the levels of unaffected literary enjoyment 
reached by the two upper classes of the high school. 


SroppInc By Woops on A SNowy EVENING 
ROBERT FROST - 


Whose woods these are I think I know. 
His house is in the village though; 

He will not see me stopping here 

To watch his woods fill up with snow.’ 


My little horse must think it queer 
To stop without a farmhouse near 
Between the woods and frozen lake 
The darkest evening of the year. 


He gives his harness bells a shake 
To ask if there is some mistake. 
The only other sound’s the sweep 
Of easy wind and downy flake. 


The woods are lovely, dark and deep. 
But I have promises to keep, 

And miles to go before [ sleep, 

And miles to go before I sleep. 


EvE 
RALPH HODGSON 


Eve, with her basket, was 
Deep in the bells and grass, 
Wading in bells and grass 
Up to her knees. 

Picking a dish of sweet 
Berries and plums to eat, 
Down in the bells and grass 
Under the trees. 


72 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


Mute as a mouse in a 
Corner the cobra lay, 
Curled round a Rie of the 
Cinnamon tall. 

Now to get even and 
Humble proud Heaven and 
Now was the moment or 
Never at all. 


“Eval”? Each syllable 
Light as a flower fell, 
“Eva!” he whispered the 
Wondering maid, 

Soft as a bubble sung 
Out of a linnet’s lung, 


Soft and most silverly 
“Eva!” he said. 


Picture that orchard sprite; 
Eve, with her body white, 
Supple and smooth to her 
Slim finger tips; 
Wondering, listening, 
Listening, wondering, 

Eve with a berry 

Halfway to her lips. 


Oh, had our simple Eve 

ese through the make-believe! 
Had she but known the 
Pretender he was! 

Out of the boughs he came, 
Whispering still her name, 
Tumbling in twenty rings 

Into the grass. 


Here was the strangest pair 
In the world anywhere, 
Eve in the bells and grass 


LITERARY JUDGMENT 


Kneeling, and he 

Telling his story low. 
Singing birds saw them go 
Down the dark path to 
The Blasphemous Tree. 


Oh, what a clatter when 
Titmouse and Jenny Wren 
Saw him successful and 
Taking his leave! 

How the birds rated him! 
How they all hated him! 
How they all pitied 

Poor motherless Eve! 
Picture her crying 

Outside in the lane, 

Eve, with no dish of sweet 
Berries and plums to eat, 
Haunting the gate of the 
Orchard in vain. 

Picture the lewd Helehes 
Under the hill to-night— 
“Eva!l’’ the toast goes round, 
“Eva!” again. 


MaRIGOLD PENDULUM 


DUDLEY POORE 


I 


Dear, with this tawny marigold 
I send you Ophir, 


I send you Spain, 
high galleons from Peru 
wallowing slow in parrot green water, 


I send you the gold house of Nero on the Aventine: 
the throne of Babur, the bed of Semiramis, 


I send you the dromedaries of Zenobia, 
the beryl jaguars of Domitian, 


73 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


the yellow desert beyond Baalbek, 
fresh minted drachmae of Heliopolis, 
rugs of Sultanabad, amber and green. 


Love, look with favor on the gift 
and the rest of my wealth shall be yours 
by the next caravan. 


II 


Will no one deliver me from the haunted moon? 
When I lie abed thinking chaste thoughts 

she crosses the floor, slips under the sheet, 

and cuddles her icy flank against mine. 

If I move to another room she is there before me. 
If I flee to the other side of the house 

she looks at me from a neighbor’s window, 

or stands on a rain barrel to wink at me. 

Now I am always listening for her step. 

On dark nights I fancy her hiding in the garret. 
In the cellar I look to find her flushed and tipsy, 
sitting cross-legged on a claret cask. 

She is faithful as an unloved wife. 

Once when her scattered hair lay on my pillow 
I threatened to kill her. In derision 

she drew a cloud over her breasts 

and hid in the water jug on my washstand. 

My thirsty knife severed only a long tress. 

For a week now I have not seen her. 

One of these summer nights I must find the way 
to slip a knotted cord under her ears. 


III 


All night the wind ran round the house 

hugging his sides with laughter. 

Thunder tramped clumsily to and fro in the garret 
dragging trunks and old bookcases over the ceiling. 
The women folk pattered up stairs and down, 
closing draughty doors, seeking each other’s beds 
to mix their long undone hair 

and gibber like bats in cavernous twilight 


LITERARY JUDGMENT 


when lightning thrust a yellow paw 

in at the window. 

I alone was glad of the tumult, 

glad of the storm that kept me awake 

to put my arm round the lightning’s neck, 
and clasping the tawny leopard against me, 
to hear once more overhead, 

through the hiss and crackle of rain 

on the smouldering world, 

the apple tree’s gnarled hands 

caressing the weathered shingles 

on a night when I held 

in the circle of two arms 

all the sun’s hoarded gold. 


IV 


Who tethered that white balloon 

to the hilltop grainfield? 

How it bellies and tugs, 

whipping the guy ropes, 

bending the oak tree pegs, 

swelling rounder and higher, 

crowding the very swallows out of Heaven. 


Knee deep in the hayrick 

the sun at rest on his pitchfork, 

in overalls stitched from a double breadth 
of blue sky denim, 

watches the glistening bag of silk 

that fills and fills 


with mounting vapour of ripe meadows. 


Oh, love, to climb with you 

into the wicker basket of the wheatfield. 

Oh, to loose the straining ropes of twisted sunlight 
that tie the white cloud to the hillcrest, 

and rise and sail 

dazzlingly over houses and steeples, 

to see red barns and zigzag fences, 

pastures shouldering green elm parasols, 

rumbling carts that yellow dust clouds lope behind, 


76 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


dangling thirsty tongues, 

chugging engines that pant 

sweating up long hills in nodding bonnets 
of curled ostrich or aigrette, 

snaky rivers striped with bridges 
writhing across the haze of level plains 
till the sea sets an icy green heel 

on their envenomed heads, 

while swarming houses run to crowd the wharves 
and dabble their toes in the surf, 

where the sailing ships 

clap shining hands on the horizon 

and steamers toss dark windy hair. 


Then at evening to rise yet higher, 

rung after rung up the laddered atmosphere, 
through emptiness like a hollow dish 

to the highest shelf of thunder, 

and there above cockcrow, above canon, 
peeping over the world’s tanned shoulder 
down the pale abyss where the sun stables at night 
to brighten his rusting harness, 

and the stars polish their silver cups by day, 
to loose a pigeon of lightning 

from a hamper of storm. 


V 


On the barn’s peak the moon sits washing her whiskers. 
Now she blinks a green eye, slowly arches her back, 
and walking along the gable on satin pads 

glares at me hungrily. 

All day she looked so demure. 

When I lay on my back in the deep grass, 

watching her prowl the sky eaves, and leap 

over fences of blue 

I never guessed she could show so thirsty a tooth. 
To-night I am afraid of her. 

I wish she had not seen me here at the window 
observing her antics. 

She is not nearly so attractive as by day, 

sly creature, rusted with mange, 


LITERARY JUDGMENT 77 


and one ear gone, I see, in the fight she had 
with the orange leopard that owns the morning. 


VI 


Thunder hops on the garret roof, 

rain scampers over the shingles, 

old father God with a flash of his testy eye 
slams the gold window of Paradise, 

pulls a torn shade across eternal splendor. 


On these rotted silks 

where the moths’ scissors slashed and snipped, 
the years have wiped their yellow brushes. 

Fold them away, dear, with the wasp-waisted spoons 
in their flannel dressing gowns. 

Let us wonder no more to whom they belonged. 
It is enough to remember they will still be here 
when we and our love are dust. 

But let us sit with an open book on our knees 
turning pages the pedantic worms have annotated 
with crabbed wisdom and obscure geometry, 
where mildew inscribes with a blue pencil 

poems in forgotten alphabets, 

and when the storm pauses 

to shake the dank hair from his eyes 

and resin the bow of his cracked fiddle, 

we shall hear through the green humming of rain 
as it lays a cold cheek on the cobwebbed glass, 
all those curious noises that the dust makes 
gently settling 

on the cracked furniture of discarded lives. 


Vil 


Summer’s gold pendulum slowlier swinging 
gleams through the fog-dimmed glass 

of the year’s tall clock. 

Come with me, love, wrap your bright shoulders 
warm in the swallow’s cloak, and fly with me 
over the brown stubble of reaped fields, 

to rest side by side on a telephone wire 


78 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


watching the loaded hay carts crawl important 
like fat caterpillars down a leafblade of road, 
or at evening to bend against the silver trance 
of still pools where the sunset holds 

long and long 

the print of our wing tips, 

till we find a lost blue key 

that winds the intricate spring 

behind a red pumpkin moon 

and a nipped marigold sun. 


Vill 


They are all yours: 

images plucked with the wild Turk’s-cap lily 
in deep reedy meadows guarded 

by the darting regiment 

of dragonflies in burnished cuirass. 


Yours the songs I make 

when weary with searching 

I come with the tang of salt winds on my lips 
and the beating of moth wings in my blood, 
to hold my joy in the blue leaping world 

and the tall dancing sun with yellow hair 
against the wheel of my mind, 

as the Greek cutter wrought 

in the hard translucence 

of sard or of jasper 


the body of Eros. 


Yours because all loveliness 
is a polished shield in whose hollow 
I see your eyes. 


And my poems are a fire 

lighted on the brink of night and death 
where I hurl like driftwood 

moon, stars, and sun, 

kingdoms, galleons, caravans, 

with hell and god and the four archangels, 
the better to see your face. 


CREATIVE READING 79 


IX. CREATIVE READING 


Tuis is a new term for a very old art, but the schoolroom 
knows little about it. Asa rule, neither pupils nor teachers 
read well in the sense that I mean here; they do not transmit 
the message directly, as a good actor always does, making 
one forget the words, the delivery, the person speaking. 
There is a thing called the reader’s tradition which so kills 
the possibility of a complete transfer and puts such a burden 
of interpretation upon the hearer that we all instinctively 
recoil when we see a speaker produce a manuscript. We 
talk so much better than we read; and when it comes to 
poetry, I safely claim that the inability to read, either aloud 
or silently, is the main cause for the failure of poetry to take 
its rightful high place in the lives of children. ‘The high- 
school pupils of the Lincoln School have been brought to read 
poetry; our procedure there is one of the conditions that one 
must take into account in comprehending the literary en- 
vironment of that part of the school. 

At the outset we give our senior high-school pupils the 
experience of hearing literature read in the way we believe it 
should be done. During the first quarter of the tenth grade 
we hardly permit them to read aloud at all. But they are 
subjected to as many literary experiences as it 1s in our power 
to give 

of ballad, songs, and snatches 
And dreamy lullaby. 

Our catalogue is long 

Through every passion ranging 


And to their numerous changes 
We tune our supple song! 


Ability to do this sort of thing, we conceive, is part of our 
business as teachers of literature. Something of the actor 
is in the requirement, a sense of feeling the part which finally 
“sets across the foots.” Indeed, as I analyze the kind of 


80 CREATIVE YOUTH 


performance which has undoubtedly brought those young 
auditors into quick rapport and has set them prying into 
books of verse to secure for themselves the hitherto un- 
guessed pleasure, I find that a sincere feeling for the mood of 
the poem is the one indispensable item. Obviously it is not 
to be had via “‘small beer parsing.””! 

Consider, for a moment or two, the different qualities in 
the following pieces of literature and ask if it is possible to 
give them their rightful values by an identical interpretation, 
the usual type of reading, that monotonous sing-song exacti- 
tude of word following word, 


First, take Orrick John’s Wild Plum: 


They are unholy who are born 
To love wild plum at night, 

Who once have passed it on a road 
Glimmering and white. 


It is as though the darkness had 
Speech of silver words, 


Or as though clouds of stars 
Perched like ghostly birds. 


They are unpitied from their birth 
And homeless in men’s sight, 
Who love, better than the earth, 

Wild plum at night. 


Recall now the dozen lines immediately following Mac- 
beth’s staggering entry, with the deed done and the blood 
dripping from his hands: 


Lapy MacpetH: . . . My husband! 

Macsetu: I have done the deed.—Didst thou not hear a noise? 

Lapy Macsetu: I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry. 
Did not you speak? 

MacspetH: When? 


1Christopher Morley’s phrase in a stirring, indignant, and vastly amusing article, A Mirror 
for Magistrates, in the Saturday Review of Literature for January 17, 1925, wherein he has the 
oyful ejaculation, ““How shall we justify the ways—not of God to man, but of teachers to 
iterature?”’ 


CREATIVE READING 81 


Lapy Macsetu: Now! 
Macsetu: As I descended? 
Lapy MacsBetu: Ay! 
MacsetH: Hark!— 
Who lies in the second chamber? 
Lapy Macsetu: Donalbain. 
Macsetu (looking at his hands): This is a sorry sight. 


Turn from that horror to the contrast between the lover 
and the mother in Meredith’s Love in the Valley: 


(The lover is saying) 


Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow 
Swift as the swallow along the river’s light 
Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets, 
Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight; 
Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine tops, 
Wayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun, 
She whom [ love is hard to catch and conquer, 
Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won! 


(While the mother is thinking) 


When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror, 
Tying up her laces, looping up her hair, 

Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded 
More love should I have and much less care! 


Read, finally, the tense fluttering and vanishing of human 
life in Adelaide Crapsey’s The Warning, remembering that 
she wrote it at Saranac while waiting for her own near sum- 
mons: 


Just now 

Out of the strange 

Still dusk . . . as strange, as still 
A white moth flew. Why am I grown 
So cold? 


A true perception of literature—taste, if you will—is a 
knowledge of differences, of textures, of values, levels. The 
feeling for these qualities enters the very spirit of the reader 


82 CREATIVE YOUTH 


and comes out in his reading; he conveys, by bearing, tone, 
pause, speed, emphasis, suggestion—whatever is intuitive in 
his personal equipment—just those distinctions which he 
knows to be there. Without this sure sense no reading is 
adequate. 

Now, one might reasonably ask, how does one acquire 
this power of literary discrimination? Unfortunately, no 
one knows. Obviously it cannot be taught in the usual 
method of the schools, which comprehends always an 
analysis, a sorting out of elements; like all arts it defies the 
open sesame of the professional pedagogue.!_ But it may be 
taught by observation and by imitation. If the teacher is 
able to play on the four strings of his instrument, the music 
will be first appreciated and later performed. That is the 
conclusion based upon many years of observation of predict- 
able results. 

So for a large part of the term of the senior high school 
our pupils listen to literature. Having heard the interpre- 
tation in a given instance the listener can immediately play 
the air himself with the score before him, and can summon, 
as often as he pleases, the delight that he first experienced. 

Not that at once he will read effectively aloud; he may not 
at first be able at all to read to “the sensual ear’’ but he may 
“pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.” 

And at the beginning of each term, taking advantage of 
the time which committees of the class will need to formulate 
a literary program, the teacher reads, reads, reads. In hold- 
ing their attention he should be expert enough to vary the 
spell, to surprise continuously with the infinite variety of his 
material. And even when the pupils begin their own pro- 
grams he should frequently add to their selections, or take 
the page from them to show other possible interpretations. 
And he should never commit the absurdity of believing, 





‘Tt were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle 
of its color and odor.”’—Shelley, in A Defence of Poetry. 


CREATIVE READING 83 


following the most popular of our modern theories of edu- 
cation, that so long as the child is performing, no higher 
result may be wished for. Child activity is marvelously 
educative, in its proper place; but it is not a substitute for 
teacher activity, in its proper place. 

In the reading, we never forget that the reading is the 
thing. Information is important only to increase the value 
of the reading. A poem read is something performed for the 
sake of an effect upon the auditor. The point is never, 
What have you learned? but What has it done to you! 
Literature differs in this respect from commonplace writing; 
it has the power to play upon the image-making self, to put 
pictures there, to stir unexpected emotions, to compel that 
lending of one’s mind to another, which, at its best, is an 
exquisite release. To be able to extract from literature this 
its finest flavor is the gift of the creative reader, without 
which literature is not different from any other combination 
of words; indeed, without that gift on the part of the reader, 
literature becomes a thing obscure if not repellent. ‘The 
commonest accusation against the literature of the schools 
is that it kills; I trust I have made clear one ground of that 
indictment. 

The gravest defect that I have noticed in the reading of 
teachers is what I might call the evidence of too much respect 
for literature. It is all done in the same solemn style 


of uttering platitudes 
In stained-glass attitudes. 


Literature is frequently grave, but is often jolly and satiric 
and sly, often purposely bombastic, uproarious, bitter, and 
even coarse, vide the drunken scenes in Twelfth Night. Ina 
seminar in Shakespeare I recall now the writhings of a famous 
professor of literature while a high-school teacher, a student 
in the course, read Polonius’s crafty advice to Laertes. She 
read it eloquently, with a tremble in her voice, as if it were 


84 CREATIVE YOUTH 


the Psalms of David and not the windy platitudes of a 
commonplace bore. When the lady had finished in a lordly 
climax, the professor unwrithed and with a bow remarked, 
“All that I can say, Miss X, is that you have read that 
speech—too well.” And the lady beamed and blushed; and 
all the other ladies murmured approval; and at the close 
they gathered around to congratulate her! Immediately 
after the hour I saw the Professor alone; he was pacing his 
small office nervously. “I thought at first,” I said, “that 
you were too hard on her, but she missed it completely.” He 
was grim. “They all missed it,’”’ he said; and added, “For 
less than that the Lord brought low the Cities of the Plain!” 
_ We teachers of the zsthetic side of education need the 
common-sense attitude of the village milkmaid, Patience. 
She listens, you remember, at first obviously perplexed, when, 
all the ladies having begged so beautifully, Bunthorne re- 
luctantly agrees to read his latest poem. But he warns them. 
“It is a wild, weird, and fleshly thing,” he says, “Yet very 
tender, very yearning, very—precious. It is called ‘Oh, 
Hollow! Hollow! Hollow!” 

Patience brightens up. “Is it a hunting song?” she asks, 
albeit timidly, for Bunthorne’s manner is menacingly heavy, 
and she is surrounded by rich, beautiful ladies of the no- 
bility. 

‘A hunting song!” exclaims Bunthorne, a little dropped, 
however, from his elevated attitude. ‘No, it is nota hunting 
song! It is the wail of the poet’s heart on discovering that 
everything is commonplace. To understand it, cling passion- 
ately to one another and think of faint lilies.” 

The ladies all cling, except Patience, who sensibly moves 
nearer the exit. 

And when he has recited of 


_ the writhing maid, lithe-limbed 
Quivering on amaranthine asphodel 


CREATIVE READING 85 


the Lady Angela exclaims, “How purely fragrant!”? And 
the Lady Saphir, ‘‘How earnestly precious!” But the 
simple Patience says, ‘‘ Well, it seems to me to be nonsense!”’ 
Then the Lady Saphir, somewhat taken aback, recovers and 
restores the high altitudes, “Nonsense, yes, probably,” she 
considers, ‘‘but, oh, what precious nonsense!” 

As a beginning assignment to a course for teachers and 
parents (and governesses) in the reading of literature I 
should prescribe a careful study of every line of the libretto 
of Patience to cure them of ranking 


as apostles in the high zsthetic band 
Who would walk down Piccadilly with a poppy (or a lily) in their 
medieval hand. 


A failure to see the humor and the sound sense in this satire 
of our profession would eliminate the student automatically 
from the course. | 

I trust the references to Patience will not seem a digression. 
It is most important for those who desire to understand how 
we have obtained certain results in the creating of literature 
itself to know that we believe the ability to read literature is 
so important that we have refused to take it invariably as a 
solemn duty (“‘I had no idea,”’ exclaims Patience, “that love 
was a duty. No wonder they all look so unhappy!”’) We 
have set enjoyment as our test, and not duty. And we have 
sought to make our reading give us all the enjoyment that 
rightfully belongs to us. ‘Poetry is the record of the 
happiest moments of the happiest and best minds,’ says the 
wise Shelley in his Defence of Poetry; therefore we have re- 
fused to chant it to an unvarying Miserere. 

We have had no “lessons” in learning to read. There 
has been no attempt at any time to formalize our literature 
in that respect. We read. But, as visiting teachers have 
frequently pointed out, we put all our attention on what the 


86 CREATIVE YOUTH 


poet hastosay. “It is as if they were reading a letter to the 
class,” one remarked, “from someone whom they all know 
very well, and like, and really want to hear from; and all 
their mind is on what the writer has to say to them.” Ex- 
actly. A poet has something to say, or he is no poet. And 
his way of saying it—vastly important always—“the elo- 
quence of beauty,” “the mild and healing sympathy,” “the 
voice of gladness,” these steal into our musings ere we are 
aware. 

Let me select again from my notes on cases. The eleventh 
grade is exploring modern poetry. Two boys have just 
reported to the class their “finds” in the work of Joyce 
Kilmer. One has read Trees clearly and acceptably enough; 
that is, none missed its obvious intention. When they had 
finished, a girl spoke a brief word concerning a group of 
Sara Teasdale’s poems that a committee had selected, mainly 
from Flame and Shadow. (The program of poems had al- 
ready been placed upon the blackboard.) At her direction 
one or two pupils read; effectively enough; at least, one heard 
every word and had time to hear, the readers knowing now 
that poetry is difficult to listen to and that the hearer de- 
serves every help of “Silence and slow Time.” Then the 
chairman arose to read The Crystal Gazer. She was a good 
reader always, accurate, clear, thoughtful; she did every- 
thing with marked intelligence; but this time she was un- 
wittingly to perform a little miracle. 

Something expectant in her quiet bearing, in her eyes— 
they had grown strangely luminous—in the slow movement 
of her hand as she gently turned a page, something held us 
before she had begun. In consequence her first line was 
given in the most perfect of all silences, that silence within 
a silence, when not only is every bodily movement of the 
audience stilled but their minds seem to stop all conflict- 
ing vibrations and willingly surrender to attention. She 
read: 


CREATIVE READING 87 


Tue CrysTAL GAZER 


I shall gather myself into myself again 

I shall take my scattered selves and make them one, 
I shall fuse them into a polished crystal ball 

Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun. 


I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent, 
Watching the future come and the present go— 

And the little shifting pictures of people rushing 
In tiny self-importance to and fro. 


Fight lines and it was all over. We settled back, some- 
what startled at what had been done to us. 

The reading that followed was all keyed high, a contagion 
was in the air, although no comment had been made; but 
when the period closed there was a rush to the astonished 
young lady and a shower of congratulations from teacher, 
pupils, and visitors, unique in the experience of that 
class. 

Mr. William Inglis was present and will bear testimony to 
the things that were done to him by that reader. It amuses 
me to think that this one-time member of the editorial 
board of Harper’s strode up to the girl and, waving a finger 
at her in an eloquent gesture of approval, talked excitedly, 
“T saw Booth do that once! Just what you did! Before he 
spoke a word he had a mob of indifferent people in a spell. 
He did things to them that night—to me—to everybody—as 
you did just now. Anda marvelous thing you did! Marvel- 
ous!”’ 

That was eleven o’clock in the morning. He had stopped 
by for another purpose entirely, but five o’clock found the 
editor still in the school and still vibrating from the marvel- 
ous thing that had been done to him! 

The reader had felt deeply; she made us feel too. She was 
not aware of having scored so exceptionally, until we told 


88 CREATIVE YOUTH 


her, although she admitted that at the time she had noted 
the sudden silence, a fall of silence, as it were; and she was 
conscious all through of, somehow, doing better than she had 
expected. It was strong feeling projected, and my belief is 
that she did it both with her mind and with her body. That 
poem was all through her when she stood quietly before us 
and held us with her bright, steady eyes. Stark Young has 
many good things to say on this side of the actor’s art—oh, 
it is acting; all good reading is that!—and the reader of The 
Crystal Gazer illustrates his. point of view pat.! 

Of course, one experience like that and a whole class is 
taught forever. They will all read better and better from 
that moment on. Fortunately good things spread; and there 
is no teaching equal.to feeling. 

My next case is out of the earliest year of this experiment, 
and it represents the first really great reading from our pupils. 
We had been working in Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley; each 
had selected a poem to present later in class. We had no 
other object then, I fancy, beyond the idea of familiarizing 
ourselves with poetry that everyone save ourselves seemed 
to know. It was a small senior class, and college entrance 
examinations—the first for this school—were impending. I 
doubt if any one in the class had a serious thought of liking 
these poems; it was a thing to be done, and this was a type of 
class that always did the necessary proper thing. (I take 
my motivation as I find it, making the most of what is al- 
ready there.) 

We set a date far ahead to come together and read, and 
went on with other matters. When the day came around I 
recall that Miss Mildred C. Thompson, now Dean, and a 
group of the faculty of Vassar College came into the room 
and sat with us through the hour. My mind, however, was 


In The Flower in Drama, the chapter on Duse. In Note VI of A Story Teller’s Story Sher- 
wood Anderson writes, “‘Mr. Stark Young had talked to me one day of what thinking might 
be, and his words kept ringing in my ears. Such words as he had said to me always excited 
like music or painting. . . . He had said that thinking meant nothing at all unless it was 
done with the whole body—not merely with the head.” 


CREATIVE READING 89 


on a young girl who entered with the others. It was her 
first return after the death of one very near to her, the dear- 
est of chums and the best playfellow she would ever know. 
She had said to us the day before, “‘I am not afraid to come 
back now. I am all right now—if they will not talk to me 
about it. I couldn’t stand it if they talked to me about it. 
I would break; and I know—I knowhe . . . would not 
want me to do that.”’ 

We read. I remember hiding my concern by excessive 
gayety over my own interpretation of The Grecian Urn (I am 
one of those who think it has a passage of the rarest crystal 
humor, but few teachers have been able to find it unassisted) ; 
but all the while I was thinking that before she had gone so 
suddenly out of class, she had selected for her study and 
reading the Ode to the Nightingale whose theme 1s Death. 
And she was smiling brightly at my fooling, with her Keats 
open before her. I took advantage of a diversion to say 
quietly to her, ““You need not read, you know.”’ 

“Oh,” she understood, “I want to read. Don’t be afraid. 
It is all right. I have been reading it ever since. It has 
consoled me as nothing else could.” 

I tried to delay the program, hoping for the closing bell, 
but only succeeded in giving her the position of climax at 
the end of the hour. 

In the first dozen words everyone, including our guests, 
were aware of a strange sincerity in the reading: 


My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk 
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk. 


Such reading! And such trembling attention! With a 
passion that those fine lines have held ready for a hundred 
years and more, she went on 


90 CREATIVE YOUTH 


Darkling I listen; and for many a time 
I have been half in love with easeful Death. . . . 
Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 
To cease upon the midnight with no pain 
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad 
In such ecstasy! 


For us the last few lines were terrible with personal mean- 
ing 
Adieu! Adieu! Thy plaintive anthem fades 
Past the near meadows, over the still streams, 
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep 
In the next valley-glades: 


Was it a vision, or a waking dream! 
Fled is that music.—Do I wake or sleep? 


Other illustrations crowd, but one cannot paint a cry, as 
old Hieronimo long ago insisted, or word the brave anguish 
of bereavement. I think now of a boy quietly reading a 
scene from Andreyev’s Anathema, where the devil, having 
first tempted old David Leizer to take a fortune, now tempts 
him to give it all to the needy. The poor, the lame, and the 
sick crowd upon him as he gives; they grow in number, the 
poor, the lame, and the sick, the maimed children—pitiful !— 
and the mothers of the children. And then come the blind, 
crowding, crowding, and David Leizer has no more to give; 
they crowd him, the blind, and feel tremblingly his body and 
seek to know his dear features with their hands, while they 
continue to cry, “So this is David Leizer! This is David 
Leizer, who will care for us now! David! David! David 
Leizer!”” And the curtain falls slowly with the exulting 
cry of the blind. But David, his fortune given away, is 
weeping painfully, for who can bind up the wounds of the 
world! 

The reading was expressionless, monotonous; but that boy 
put that scene into our minds so that it is likely to stay with 


UNSUPERVISED READING gl 


us. He made us feel it for the remainder of our days; be- 
cause he felt it himself. 


X. UNSUPERVISED READING 


OuTSIDE reading has been almost entirely voluntary, but 
it has been done well; and it has counted enormously in giving 
us a setting for our creative work. How this unsupervised 
“reading for pleasure’”’ has been kept at its commendable 
level is another story; the point in this analysis is to note 
that, both in the type of book read and in the “spread” of 
good reading among the pupils, the results have been 
increasingly desirable: almost everyone now reads non- 
fiction easily; the standard of pleasure-in-reading for all 
classifications (fiction, verse, drama, essay) is high; the 
“return, in chat and discussion and in brief book report and 
long article, is all that we might ask for. Best of all, the 
spirit of the comment on reading is natural and truthful; 
therefore it 1s often felicitously put! and—therefore, again !— 
often strangely wise. No school-book “categories” are even 
remotely referred to, for these young persons know little 
about such matters; but daily the strongest kind of distinction 
is drawn by those young readers, in values, in relationships, 
in form and design, in measures of feeling, in sense of phrasing, 
in mass effect and the like, with never the need of any 
specially learned vocabulary. 

The importance of securing a receptive audience must be 
stressed. Your occasional poet may always be found, and 
the teacher with a flair for that sort of thing himself may do 
much to stimulate imaginative power; but nothing in all the 
teacher's art can equal in potency the effect of the pupil’s 
own contemporaries. If they are ignorant of literary 


1As in this book report by a tenth-grade boy: When a book is as widely read and as highly 
praised as David Copperfield, it seems almost heresy to make an unfavorable comment, yet I did 
not like it. The story seemed to me long-winded and uninteresting, and a large number of the 
incidents of which it is composed unbearably sentimental. The characters appeared greatly 
overdrawn, all the way from Agnes, the tender innocent, to Mr. Micawber, the humorous 
ne’er-do-well. I never would have finished David Copperfield if I had not felt that it was a 
necessary part of my education. 


92 CREATIVE YOUTH 


experience—that ciliated uprising of Benét or the cervical 
thrill of Phelps—they have an unholy power to blight; if, 
however, they have been genuinely stirred by literature, if 
good reading is really a part of their life, they will behave 
toward poets as would any other intelligent and cultured 
audience—better, indeed, for adults in the mass have a deft 
habit of pretending to good taste by following the lead of the 
hour, and, for the same reason, maturer persons are less free 
to stress their honest dislikes. But, granted a large widely 
read group in a school, the reception of good verse becomes 
something in the nature of a triumph; the public reading is 
listened to with a keenness that is felt, the approval is spon- 
taneous and obviously genuine, the later chatter in hall and 
lunchroom marks it for its own.! 

The drift toward the better book has been steady and per- 
sistent. We have no “lists,” although we recommend to 
pupils and parents the booklet on reading by S. A. Leonard, 
a former teacher of English in the Lincoln School, whose drive 
for good reading at the very beginning of the school is still 
operating.? With us the recommendation of a book comes 
best out of the moment’s need; and no hour passes without 
some necessary title appearing on the blackboard or on the 
bulletin boards. Regularly complete lists of the most recent 
reading of a whole class are bulletined for the benefit of those 
who wish to inquire of the reading of a neighbor. 

Occasionally a class with an accumulation of interesting 
reading will take a period to tell one another of ‘“‘something 
good.” Professor and Mrs. Julius Sachs will recall one 
belligerent hour in a ninth-grade class when a boy sought 
to prove the worth of the then little known Katherine Mans- 
held, a difficult task for an even older critic, and how he suc- 
ceeded in first arousing their disdain and then tantalizing 
Pah they talk about poetry while they eat!’”’ Visitor’s comment, January, 1923. 

*Reading for Realization of Varied Experiences, by S. A. Leonard (Lippincott, Philadelphia; 
paper, 50 cents). A very necessary pamphlet for pupil and parent, and for teachers no matter 


wre the subject of instruction; the annotated lists cover all the fields of interest of children of 
ages. 


UNSUPERVISED READING 93 


their curiosity to know more of her. In this instance, by the 
way, both Bliss and The Garden Party became eventually 
the most popular books of fiction of the year, spreading out 
into the high school generally, a fact which makes the whole 
problem of grade placement in reading a still more intangible 
mystery. 

Book reports—brief notations on a card—are read aloud, 
the more significant being printed in the Lore and the 
Lorette along with those fuller reports that just could not be 
held to the limits of a library card. Samples of this sort of 
annotating in the elementary school are given in Miss Eaton’s 
account of the Lincoln School library.1 Here are a few 
types from the high school, some of which have already been 
printed in Lincoln Verse, Story and Essay. The Roman 
numerals indicate the grade of the writer. 


BOOK REPORTS 


(The oft-stated object of the Book Report is to convey, as 
briefly as may be, to one who has not read the book some 
notion of the kind of experience he will be likely to meet; to 
attract him to read, therefore, or to warn him away.) 


SENIOR HicH SCHOOL 


The Story Teller’s Pack by Frank Stockton is a group of pleasant, 
well-written short stories. The tales are fanciful, improbable 
though not impossible, done in somewhat the spirit of a fairy story. 
No particular effort is expended towards making the story or 
characters realistic, yet there are many bits of human nature. 
The whole style is humorous, a mild, chuckling type of humor, 
nothing uproarious. All in all, they make very pleasant reading. 


AIT. 


Typhoon is a sea tale. It is not a yarn spun from the infinite 
and romantic imagination of some harpy, but as vivid and realistic 
a picture of a storm at sea as one may have with his two legs on 


1T he Lincoln School Library, by Anne T. Eaton, Teachers College Record, January, 1923. 


94 CREATIVE YOUTH 


dry ground and a steady chair beneath him. . . . One feels 
the whip of salt water in the eyes, the swell and lurch, the groping 
for something—anything—to grab to. One sees the livid, dirty 
faces of the Chinamen; one senses the panic and the terror in 
their souls. . . . The fascination of the book lies not alone in 
the depicting of the storm, but also in the characters. Interest- 
ingly, clearly, they are impressed upon one’s memory, their in- 
ward traits even more so than their physical appearance. Indeed, 
as a character study alone, Typhoon would be remarkable. We see 
them all: stolid, unemotional to the point of stupidity, dutiful 
MacWhirr, yet with elements.of greatness in him; Jukes, brilliant 
in flashes, young; Rout, snarling, cowering, almost a rotter. 
Everyone will find something interesting here. ‘To those who have 
any love for the sea, or any desire to know the power and passion 
of the elements, to those who would be tossed and fascinated by 
it, to them, I would unhesitatingly recommend Typhoon by Joseph 
Conrad.—XI. 


Home Fires in France by Dorothy Canfield is a series of war 
sketches at the front, or else very near it. All of them are uncom- 
fortably real. In spite of the fact that the war is over, they give 
most readers a wild, unreasonably, nearly uncontrollable longing 
to go over and do something about it—something desperate.—XI. 


If I May by A. A. Milne. These essays by Milne are patch- 
worky. Sometimes one feels that he thinks he is being really 
quite clever, and again one finds a sincere piece. Now and then 
he gives a surprising flop at the last. However, the reader feels 
it coming, or hears the author saying to himself, “I’m going to 
make a clever twist at the end.” And he does.—X. 


The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems. It is cruel to review it. It 
is too lovely. Nothing can be said better than, “Read it!’’ She has 
a number of lovely sonnets and after reading each one you feel she 
has told you another of her secrets. The title poem is wonderful; 
or, rather, awful. It makes you think of all the beautiful sad 
things mothers do for their children. She writes of death, too 
often for one so young. I should like her to be quite gay all the 
time; she is best that way.—XI. 


Caesar and Cleopatra by Bernard Shaw. This play is a very 
amusing drama of Czsar’s exploits in Egypt. It is a very humor- 


UNSUPERVISED READING 95 


ous contrast between the stony yet fruitful mind of Czsar and the 
playful girlish character of Cleopatra. In the second scene before 
the great Sphinx on the desert Cleopatra is so young and girlish, 
and Czsar is so dominating, that the contrast makes you laugh 
more than once. During the play you can see that he is trying to 
see if she perchance has an inner self more serious and conscientious. 
Often you wonder how much Cesar really knows and how much he 
is blufing.—X. 


My experience with Pilgrim’s Progress is probably rather differ- 
ent from the average experience, because of certain circumstances 
at home. Where I am staying there are quantities of beautifully 
bound books, such as Stevenson, Dumas, Shakespeare, and others, 
which, when I was about eight or ten years old, failed to appeal or 
interest me, but there were two books which I liked. One was 
“Russian Wonder Tales” and the other was Bunyan’s “ Pilgrim’s 
Progress.”” I read these books chiefly because they had pictures. 
I remember “‘Pilgrim’s Progress”? more for the story than for the 
morals in it. I often wondered why the author gave the char- 
acters such queer names. I always have enjoyed the story and 
the pictures. When I read the book now I realize the wonderful 
work in it—the writing of a very serious and moral book in such 
an interesting way. After you have read it you sometimes see 
your friends and enemies as different characters in the book, so 
well are the characters characterized.—X. 


Junior HicH ScHOOL 


| 

The Cruise of the Cachalot by First Mate Bullen is not a story, 

because it is true, but it is the best story I have read in a long time. 

It is written actually by a sailor who rose to be first mate on one 

of those old two to three year whaling cruises and is full of ad- 

venture with pictures of sea monsters and strange people of strange 
seas that stay in your mind long after.—IX. 


When We Were Very Young by A. A. Milne is full of the funniest 
poetry by a boy named James James Morrison Morrison Weather- 
by George Duprey. Fathers and mothers will like it (mine did) 
and your smallest brother and sister, if they are not too small, 
will too. One of the best poems in the book is Disobedience, but 
you are always liking another best. The Royal Bread and Butter, 
J think the name is, is awfully good.—IX. 


96 CREATIVE YOUTH 


The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll who wrote Alice in 
Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. | was quite surprised to 
learn he had written this book too, and I was glad to get it but it 
is nothing like the other two. However, you would enjoy it if you 
like pure nonsense verses done into a long story which seems to be 
going on frightfully fast and furious but never really gets anywhere. 


—VIII. 


The White Monkey continues the story of the Forsytes into an- 
other generation but while the names are mentioned it does not 
seem like the other stories at all. Perhaps that really doesn’t 
matter for it keeps you going with a story of its own. I did not 
care for it as I did the others. I couldn’t get interested in any of 
the people but a couple of minor characters, a man who steals to 
save his wife from starvation and his wife who becomes an artist’s 
model for love of the thief. They were wonderful. I couldn’t 
get enough of them. I didn’t care what happened to the other 
characters, and their so-called moonings over their so-called trou- 


bles bored me.—IX. 


A Trip to the Moon by Jules Verne shows you how a scientist 
could really go to the moon if he wanted to. They are blown up 
in a projectile, aimed with just the right amount of gunpowder 
to blow them out of the orbit of the earth and on to the moon. In 
the middle of the journey they are attracted equally by the earth 
and the moon and so float in the air, the chickens they carry with 
them float too, and one lays an egg while floating in the air. A 
glass of wine poured out at this time takes a spherical shape like 
the earth. A dog dies and they throw it out through a trap door in 
the projectile and it begins to travel around the projectile like 
amoon. The men being scientists calculate its orbit. It 1s accu- 
rate scientifically and a good story.— VIII. 


The Young Visiters by Daisy Ashford. I don’t see anything in 
The Young Visiters so remarkable by Daisy Ashford. They say it 
is a remarkable book for a little girl to write and that it 1s very 
funny. It doesn’t seem to me to be remarkable but very poor 
and it is not so very funny.—VIII. 


Any one who enjoyed reading Treasure Island will enjoy Porto 
Bello Gold, which is a successor to this book. It tells of the ex- 


UNSUPERVISED READING 97 


periences of David Omerod, a boy of about hfteen years who was 
kidnapped by a gang of pirates who came into the harbor of the 
town in a King’s ship followed by another old sailing vessel. Their 
leader was Captain Murray, a rather old but stately gentleman, 
very richly dressed. 

Omerod and his big Dutch friend, Peter, who insisted upon going 
with the boy, had a big adventure that will hold you until you 
Gnish the book. Murray captures a large Spanish man-o’-war and 
an immense treasure, taking with them the captain, a friend of 
Murray’s and his daughter whom Omerod takes a liking to. 

The best part and most exciting part of the story follows. 
What was Murray, a well-to-do gentleman, doing with a class of 
pirates so unlike himself? What became of the treasure? What 
was the fate of Murray, the captives, and everybody else?—IX. 


Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. The plot of this story 
is a very queer one indeed. Miss Havisham was in her bridal dress 
awaiting the coming of the groom. She was prepared to be married 
but at the last moment the groom decided it would not be. This 
disappointed her so that she never saw the light of day again. She 
never changed her bridal dress, nor had the large bridal cake 
removed from its place on the long table. Pip, the hero of the 
story, has a wonderful fortune given him by an unknown benefactor. 


The outcome of this gift forms a very pathetic part of the story.— 
VIII. 


The Lost World by-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is one of my favorite 
books. It is about the adventures of modern men in the lost world 
of a prehistoric age in South America, where the race of savage 
monsters, supposed to be extinct, still exist. Four men are alone 
in a jungle of horrors, entrapped and prey to beasts twenty times as 
large as one elephant.—VII. 


Robinson Crusoe by Daniel DeFoe. This is the dullest book I 
ever readin my life. Through many many pages it tells only about 
the things Robinson Crusoe cooks and eats and makes on his desert 
island. All a child needs of this story, I think, can be found in 
the many short stories rewritten from it.—VII. 


The Young Trailer is by Altsheler. It is about a boy whose 
family went West and started a settlement. He was captured by 
Indians, and came back and saved the settlement from hostile 
Indians. He also had many other adventures.—VII. 


98 CREATIVE YOUTH 


To give concretely the character of the outside reading, as a 
help to an understanding of the literary soil on which our 
creative work flourishes, we present below a picture of the 
“reading for pleasure” of two high-school classes taken on a 
random mid-winter day. To assure ourselves that each 
title represents a natural choice, the data have been checked 
by reference to book reports and library slips, and, where 
necessary, by thoroughly concealed oral quizz. Each pupil 
is represented by a number; none are omitted except those 
who were absent on the days the check was made. 


ELEVENTH GRADE 


(Last three books read this term, and book now being read. Taken 
December 16th) 


BOYS 


1. All God's Chillun Got Wings (O'Neill); 4 Few Figs from 
Thistles (Millay); Carmina (Daly). Now reading: 
The Riverman (White). 

2. Irish Fairy Tales (Stephens); Rubaiyat (Fitzgerald); 
Collected Poems, Vol. I. (Noyes). Now reading: Drake 
(Noyes). 

3. If (Dunsany); If Winter Comes (Hutchinson); Justice 
(Galsworthy). Now reading: Gods of the Mountain 
(Dunsany); Land of Heart’s Desire (Yeats). 

4. Hassan (Flecker); If (Dunsany); Others for 1917 (Kreym- 
borg). Now reading: Henry Brocken (de la Mare). 

5. If (Dunsany); The Pigeon (Galsworthy); 4 Kiss for Cin- 
deretla (Barrie). Now reading: The Emperor Jones 
(O’Neill). 

6. My Friend’s Book (France) On Reading (Brandes); Where 
the Blue Begins (Morley). Now reading: Pickwick 
Papers (Dickens). 

7. The Mayor of Casterbridge (Hardy); New Hampshire (Frost); 
“—And Other Poets’? (Untermeyer). Now reading: 
Looking Backward (Bellamy). 

8. Books I and II of Paradise Lost (Milton); The Great Divide 
(Moody); Ariel (Maurois). Now reading: Pickwick 
Papers (Dickens); Little Pierre (France). 


10. 


Il. 


12. 


13. 


22. 


O33 


UNSUPERVISED READING 99 


The Brood of the Witch Queen (Rohmer); The Spell of the 
Yukon (Service); The Three Musketeers (Dumas). 
Now reading: 4 Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's 
Court (Twain). 

The Vicar of Wakefield (Goldsmith); Van Bibber and 
Others (Davis); The Snare (Sabatini). Now reading: 
Vanity Fair (Thackeray). 

David Copperfield (Dickens); Vanity Fair (Thackeray); 
The Vicar of Wakefield (Goldsmith). Now reading: 
Pickwick Papers (Dickens). 

David Copperfield (Dickens); 4 Tramp Abroad (Twain); 
Stalky &% Co. (Kipling). Now reading: The Scarlet 
Pimpernel (Orczy). 

The Vicar of Wakefield (Goldsmith); Hunters of the North 
(Stefansson); Enoch Arden (Tennyson). Now reading: 
The Slave Ship (Johnson). | 

The Hand of Ethelberta (Hardy); Two on a Tower (Hardy); 
From Immigrant to Inventor (Pupin). Now reading: 
The Oregon Trail (Parkman). 

Mr. Britling Sees It Through (Wells); The White Company 
(Doyle); Travels with a Donkey (Stevenson). Now 
reading: Nothing. 

The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne); The House of the Seven 
Gables (Hawthorne); Green Mansions (Hudson). Now 
reading: Hamlet (Shakespeare). 

Macbeth (Shakespeare); Richard II (Shakespeare); Fables 
(ZEsop). Now reading: Fairy Tales (Grimm). 

The Tempest (Shakespeare); Pickwick Papers (Dickens); 
Fighting Back (Wittwer). Now reading: Nothing. 

Captains Courageous (Kipling); She Blows! (Hopkins); 

Fourteen Years a Sailor (Kenlon), Now reading: The 

Boy Whaler (Tucker). 

Danger (Doyle); The Knight on Wheels (Hay); Blind 
(Poole). Now reading: Nothing. 

The Sea Hawk (Sabatini); Twenty Years After (Dumas); 
The Viscount of Bragelonne (Dumas). Now reading: 
Nothing. 

Haunch, Paunch, and Jowl (Anon.); The Viscount of 
Bragelonne (Dumas); Typhoon (Conrad). Now reading: 
Nothing. 

The Pathfinder (Cooper); 4 Tale of Two Cities (Dickens); 


I0O 


24. 


ET; 


12. 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


The Sea Rover (Cooper). Now reading: The House Boat 
on the Styx (Bangs). 

The World Set Free (Wells); Luck on the Wing (Haslet); 
The Daredevil of the Army (Corcoran). Now reading: 
Ballads (Service). 


GIRLS 


The Nigger of the Narcissus (Conrad); Typhoon (Conrad); 
The Four Horsemen (Ibanez). Now reading: The Snow 
Man (Sand). 

Les Misérables (Hugo); Island Nights Entertainment 
(Stevenson); The Crock of Gold (Stephens). Now read- 
ing: An Inland Voyage (Stevenson). 

Concerning Paul and Fiammetta (Harker); The Heart of 
a Dog (Terhune); Treve (Terhune). Now reading: 
Jim Davis (Masefeld). 

To Tell You the Truth (Merrick); The Tryst (Merrick); 
The Quohaug (Lincoln). Now reading: The Real Lincoln 
(Weik). 

Captain Blood (Sabatini); The Man Without a Country 
(Hale); Tom Sawyer (Twain). Now reading; Letters 
to His Children (Roosevelt). 

Cranford (Gaskell); Pride and Prejudice (Austen); Essays 
of Elia (Lamb). Now reading: Ariel (Maurois). 

Vanity Fair (Thackeray); Auld Licht Idylls (Barrie); 
The Green Hat (Arlen). Now reading: Autobiography 
(Twain). 

General William Booth Enters into Heaven (Lindsay); 
The Dark Forest (Walpole); The Chinese Nightingale 
(Lindsay). Now reading: 4 Tramp Abroad (Twain). 

American Poetry Since 1900 (Untermeyer); Pictures of the 
Floating World (Lowell); The Hound of Heaven (Thomp- 
son). Now reading: Henry Esmond (Thackeray); Tess 
of the d’Urbervilles (Hardy). 

The Garden of Folly (Leacock); The Pigeon (Galsworthy); 
A Lost Lady (Cather). Now reading: Dauber (Masefield). 

Julie Cain (O'Higgins); Elsie and the Child (Bennett). 
Now reading: Henry Esmond (Thackeray). 

The Able McLaughlins (Wilson); The Life of Oliver Gold- 
smith (Irving); The Silver Forest (Williams). Now read- 
ing: The New Morning (Noyes). 


13. 


14. 


ee 


16. 


17. 


18. 


19. 


UNSUPERVISED READING IOI 


The Woman of Knockaloe (Cain); The Forest Lovers 
(Hewlett); Pride and Prejudice (Austen). Now reading: 
Ariel (Maurois); Nocturne (Swinnerton). 

Nocturne (Swinnerton); 4 Lost Lady (Cather); The Pigeon 
(Galsworthy). Now reading: Hassan (Flecker); The 
White Monkey (Galsworthy). 

Tubal Cain (Hergesheimer); Justice of the Duke (Sabatini). 
Now reading: Life of Cesare Borgia (Sabatini); Fraternity 
(Galsworthy). 

Captain Blood (Sabatini); The Honorable Peter Sterling 
(Ford); The Three Musketeers (Dumas). Now reading: 
Our Mutual Friend (Dickens). 

New Hampshire (Frost); A Boy’s Will (Frost); The Light 
Guitar (Guiterman). Now reading: My Unknown 
Chum (Fairbanks). 

The Crime of Sylvester Bonnard (France); Tess of the 
@Urbervilles (Hardy); His Children’s Children (Train). 
Now reading: David Copperfield (Dickens). 

The Shadow Line (Conrad); The Thirteen Travellers (Wal- 
pole); Sentimental Tommy (Barrie). Now reading: 


The Life of Francis Place (Wallas); Shelley (Vhompson). 


NintuH GRADE 


(Last three books read this term and book now being read. Taken 


January 18) 
BOYS 


She Blows! (Hopkins); The Cruise of the Cachalot (Bullen); 
The Spy (Cooper). Now reading: Two Years Before 
the Mast (Dana). 

The Virginian (Wister); The Sun of Quebec (Altsheler) ; In the 
Fog (Davis). Now reading: Free Rangers (Altsheler). 
The Prairie (Cooper); The Pathfinder (Cooper); The Spy 
(Cooper). Now reading: Twenty Thousand Leagues 

Under the Sea (Verne); The Talisman (Scott). 

Two Years Before the Mast (Dana); The Boy Whaleman 
(Tucker); Letters from a Radio Engineer toHis Son (Mills). 
Now reading: Story of a Bad Boy (Aldrich). 

Fifty Years a Journalist (Stone); Life and Letters of J. J. 
Pulitzer (Seitz); The Rover (Conrad). Now reading: 
Autobiography (Twain). 


102 


1O. 


II. 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


South Sea Tales (London); Donovan Pasha (Parker); 
Salthaven (Jacobs). Now reading: Porto Bello Gold 
(Smith); David Copperfield (Dickens). 

Possessed (Moffett); So Big (Ferber) ;[sle of Thorns (Smith). 
Now reading: Seventeen (Tarkington). 

A Trip to the Moon (Verne); The Wreckers (Stevenson); 
Red Fox (Roberts). Now reading: The Black Arrow 
(Stevenson). 

Great Expectations (Dickens); Old Curiosity Shop (Dickens) 
Bulldog Drummond (McNeile). Now reading: Blue 
Tiger (Caldwell). ~ 

Around the World in Eighty Days (Verne); The Lost Hunters 
(Altsheler); The Prowler (Choen). Now reading: Three 
Men in a Boat (Jerome). 

The Final War (Tracy); The Great Mogul (Tracy); The 
Wings of the Morning (Tracy). Now reading: The Cap- 
tain of the Kansas (Tracy). 

The Spirit of the Border (Grey); To the Last Man (Grey); 
The Young Pitcher (Grey). Now reading: Nothing. 

Three Men in a Boat (Jerome); Ransom’s Folly (Davis) 3 
The Biography of a Grizzly (Seton). Now-reading: 
Captain Blood (Sabatini). 

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Verne); Great 
Pirates (Finger); The Old Soak’s History of the World 
(Marquis). Nowreading: Three Men ina Boat (Jerome). 

Pearl Lagoon (Nordhoff); Whelps of the Wolf (Marsh); 
Lords of the Wild (Altsheler). Now reading: Nothing. 

Sunset Ranch (Cody); The Last of the Mohicans (Cooper); 
The Spy (Cooper). Now reading: Mates of the Tangle 
(McKishnie). 


GIRLS 


Monsieur Beaucaire (Tarkington); Lorna Doone (Black- 
more); Little Boy Lost (Hudson). Now reading: Tom 
Sawyer (Twain); Autobiography (Twain). 


The Little French Girl (Sedgwick); Robin (Burnett); Arzel 


(Maurois). Now reading: The White Monkey (Gals- 
worthy). | 
The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton); Hard Pressed (White); 
The Lengthened Shadow (Locke). Now reading: The 

Slave of Silence (White). 


Io. 


Il. 


UNSUPERVISED READING 103 


The White Monkey (Galsworthy); The Green Hat (Arlen); 
The Old Ladies (Walpole). Now reading: Nothing. 

Ramona (Jackson); Charis Sees it Through (Widdemer); 
The Little French Girl (Sedgwick). Now reading: 
You're Only Young Once (Widdemer). 

A Bow of Orange Ribbon (Barr); The Little White Bird 
(Barrie); Peter and Wendy (Barrie). Now reading: 
Jane Eyre (Bronte). 

Rainbow Valley (Montgomery); Fidelis (Abbott); Ramona 
(Jackson). Now reading: The Count of Monte Cristo 
(Dumas). | 

Buff (Terhune); Bruce (Terhune); The Story of Mankind 
(Van Loon). Now reading: Silas Marner (Eliot). 

A Bow of Orange Ribbon (Barr); The Maid of Maiden Lane 
(Barr); The Home Maker (Canfield). Now reading: 
Tennessee Shad (Johnston). 

Nicholas (Moore); The Prince and the Pauper (Twain); 
Tom Playfair (Finn). Now reading: 4 Tale of Two 
Cities (Dickens). 

The Hunting of the Snark (Carroll); Powder, Patches, and 
Patty (Knipe); David Balfour (Stevenson). Now reading, 
Crimson Patch (Seaman). | 


UNSUPERVISED READING 


Percentile distribution of eight hundred titles of books r:ad outside of class 


by senior and junior high-school pupils 


Books OF INTEREST PRIMARILY TO CHILDREN 











GRADES VEL VILE ay ok eC Git 


Juveniles of distinction 
(Lad, a Dog, Bob, Son of Battle, 
Treasure Island, Little Women, 
Kari the Elephant, The Jungle 
Book, Tennessee Shad, Jim Davts, 
for example) FO Gu eE Ou ke Qh [er eOAlt My eO2 [kit 





es ee | rene | ne | ere | re 


Juveniles purely 
(Free Rangers, The Rover Boys, 
The Campfire Girls, for example)| .30] .13] .15 





i Lael meen emma 


104 CREATIVE YOUTH 


Books oF INTEREST PRIMARILY TO ADULTS 


GRADES MELA VLUT) VLOG SO eA ee 


- | | | | | ——_—_— 


Standard authors: to Kipling CE SM COU Wid Ria ee 

















Standard authors: from Kipling on 
(Kipling, Masefield, Conrad, 
Shaw, Barrie, Synge, Stevenson, 
Moody, O’Neill, Frost, for ex- 
ample) IAS 20 1 97) ee 5 ee 


Contemporary writers of consequénce 
(Poole, Merrick, Cather, Train, 
Walpole, Morley, Stevens, for 
example) YO6 12229) 223,108 28 ies ee 


NS ee ee 


Commonplace adult fiction 
(The Lone Horseman of the Pam- 
pas, The Middlemarsh Mystery, 
The Purple Fan are type titles)}| .og| .12 





[07)) 206 | Atos i ies 


| 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 


Junior High School Senior High School 












Contemporary 


Standard 
Authors 


“oveniles’ of 
} Distinction 


Standard Authors 


59% 





A random selection of eight hundred titles of books read out- 
side of class discloses a high standard of reading-for-interest: 1n 
the Junior High School 71% and in the Senior High School 957% 


may be classified as books of distinction. 


A further note must be added, if a true understanding 1s 
to be had of the causes that lead our pupils to desire to read 


UNSUPERVISED READING 105 


widely and well. As we have no prescribed “lists,” so we 
make no restrictions on the kind of book that may be read. 
In the battle of the books we take neither the side of the 
ancients nor of the moderns. Naturally enough, we make 
clear the necessity for reading some of the books known 
generally by the world of cultivated persons, an easy argu- 
ment to prove; and we invite our pupils, aside from other 
standards, to test out the utility of any piece of reading for 
its worth as a passport to the regions of our equals and our 
betters. That is simply a matter of common sense. Any 
high-school pupil may be led to see the necessity of having 
some actual reading experience with, say, the Odyssey, if for 
no other reason than that he must be able to understand 
later references to it. In that sense one is more sure of the 
future value of Hamlet than of the latest serial in the most 
approved monthly; and, in a similar way, one could make a 
case for An Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit 
as against The Middletown Mystery merely on its use as a 
shibboleth to an even more select intellectual circle, if one is 
interested in that sort of thing. And it is conceivable, too, 
that to a pupil of the upper high-school grades some books 
would assume a high practical value on account, almost 
solely, of their use as preparation for college. ‘These aspects 
have been in mind, no doubt, in choosing some of the titles 
listed above under “‘ Unsupervised Reading.” 

However, we try to keep open-minded even here. Brown- 
ing may be a better poet to know than Masefield, but we 
refuse to hold a brief for either against the other. Judicially, 
when questioned, we state such facts as are known, but it is 
important for us in all our relationships with our pupils that 
we should not even seem to hold up a prisms-and-prunes 
standard. We try to remember that thirty years and more 
ago the pedagogues of the period were classifying Huckle- 
berry Finn derisively with Peck’s Bad Boy; and the Fables in 
Slang were not then to be mentioned at all. No; we must 


106 CREATIVE YOUTH 


be in the position to welcome any honest delight of our 
pupils, and know that if there 1s, as we believe, a stairway of 
literary taste leading upward to finer air and more beautiful 
vistas, it is built out of pages of every known kind of reading 
matter from The Rover Boys through Deadwood Dick and 
The Lone Horseman of the Pampas, from Betty Wales through 
The Sheik and How She Loved Him. 


Every gaudy color 
Is a bit of truth, 


sings wise young Nathalia Crane. So we have no sneer 
for any book that any pupil really cares for. The school, 
from our point of view, is not setting up the kind of literary 
delight that children shall be allowed to have; rather, it 1s 
seeking, with a wary eye on our own prejudices, to discover 
what those delights really are. 

All this to emphasize the fact that the type of books dis- 
closed in this random cross-section of the reading of our 
high-school pupils is especially noteworthy, in that we 
are conscious of forcing no one’s taste in the matter 
through a school-teachery appeal to authority, or even to 
affection. 

But we do admit to placing, right in their path, a cleverly 
stocked and cleverly arranged school library, of which more 
at length. 


M1 cUsE ScHOOL LIBRARY, 


THE ingredients that make up the school environment, 
which, we believe, has brought forth the latent literary 
abilities of our pupils, cannot be adequately analyzed with- 
out taking into account the unobtrusive but persistent part 
played by the school library. Organized and managed by 
a trained librarian, it functions as a part of the instructional 
scheme, fitting so snugly into all the book needs of the school 


THE SCHOOL LIBRARY 107 


that no department and no grade is without some constant 
and continuous relation to it. 

The first thing, probably, that the new teacher in this 
school notices is the unsolicited “‘flow”’ of books and ma- 
terials into his classroom. An interest which he has started 
is reflected instantly in the library and is there noted for such 
use as may appear. ‘This is because the pupils have become 
accustomed to go immediately to the library to find out what 
they need to know; therefore the librarian is able instantly 
to detect the difference between an isolated inquiry and 
something that begins to take on the appearance of a mass 
interest. Within a day or two the librarian will know, 
further, whether the general interest is merely momentary— 
a useful but passing flare like, say, the folklore inquiries 
aroused by the visit to the school of a delegation of Pueblo 
Indians, or a slowly developing movement like the demand 
for contemporary verse a year ago, which held one group for 
six months and percolated right and left into other parts of 
the school. hg 

In the first phases of class interest a small line of books, 
stacked for easy inspection, will appear on the loan desk. 
Later, if the call continues, the line will include other books 
and attractive pictures and quotations will grace the library 
bulletin boards. As sensitively as an expert broker knows 
the feel of the tape, the library now responds to probable 
future demands: with borrowings from other libraries of 
books, pictures, magazines; with strange volumes out of the 
librarian’s personal store; with bulletin-board announcements 
of events of pertinent appeal—a public reading by Edna St. 
Vincent Millay (which, by the way, the whole senior class 
eventually attended!), reviews of the London production of 
Hassan, historic costume designs for a forthcoming play, and 


tThe Lincoln School Library, by Anne T. Eaton, Teachers College Record, January, 1923, 
for a fuller account of the school library, especially in its;relations with departments of the school 
other than English. 


108 CREATIVE YOUTH 


so on, with delighting variety. By this time, granted that 
the impulse along the particular line has persisted and has 
become general, the small line of books on the loan desk has 
grown into a complete special shelf with its own library label; 
new books have been bought; supplementary material ap- 
pears in the wall cases, and illustrations flourish under the 
plate glass of the exhibition tables. 

Then one day the librarian appears in the classroom, almost 
invariably at the persistent invitation of some of the pupils; 
she is welcomed by the class as one having the same interests, 
by the teacher as a fellow conspirator! Perhaps she will 
have with her some alluringly appropriate material, Walter 
de la Mare’s Flora, for instance, poems done to illustrate the 
drawings of Pamela Bianco; or it might be the very latest 
book of their favorite poet, Robert Frost, or the much 
heralded poems of Katherine Mansfield, whose prose had 
delighted and mystified them and whose death had come 
suddenly as a something sadly personal. We make much 
of her visit, knowing the compliment thus paid out of her 
busy hours; and we take on a renewed spirit, for we know that 
when the librarian comes among us thus personally we are 
no longer drifting in a shore eddy, but are on a strong carry- 
ing tide with the trades at our back! 

The “flow” between the library and the classroom, whose 
varying degrees we have just noted, is indispensable for an 
understanding of the naturalness of our interest 1n poetry. 
A mother of a boy has just told me, “I rejoice that the Lin- 
coln School has made poetry one of the manly sports. My 
boy and his boy friends talk and dispute over poetry as 
they would over any other natural healthy interest.” My 
strong suspicion, and perhaps I say it who shouldn't, is that 
the library has helped to take poetry out of the classroom 
and so save it, to use Amy Lowell’s bitter phrase, from that 
“drying and freezing process which goes by the name of 


education.” 


FE 


AN EXAMPLE OF FOLLOW-UP FROM THE 


LIBRARY BULLETIN BOARD 





HESE BOOKS, WHICH WERE AMONG THOSE 
MENTIONED FRIDAY IN THE ELEVENTH GRADE 
ENGLISH CLASS “BOOK REVIEW DAY,” ARE IN 


THE SCHOOL LIBRARY 


(or else have been ordered and will soon be there) 


Garland 
Roosevelt 
Bronté 
Davis 


Cooper 


Barrie 


Wister 
Van Dyke 
Stevenson 
Kipling 
Stevenson 
Stephens 
Austen 
Kipling 
Andrews 
Churchill 
Doyle 
Mitchell 
Warren 
Rostand 
Dunsany 
Merrick 
Parker 


Stefansson 


Son of the Middle Border 

Letters to His Children 

Jane Eyre 

Soldiers of Fortune (We shall have this later; 

meanwhile we have his Gallagher and Other 

Stories and The King’s Jackal and White Mice) 

The Last of the Mohicans 

The Little Minister (We have also The Litile 
White Bird and Sentimental Tommy) 

The Virginian 

The Blue Flower 

New Arabian Nights 

Kim 

St. Ives 

The Crock of Gold (Coming) 

Pride and Prejudice 

The Light That Failed (Coming) 

The Perfect Tribute 

Richard Carvel (Also The Crisis) 

The Hound of the Baskervilles 

Amos Judd 

Twig of Thorn 

Cyrano de Bergerac 

Five Tales (We haven’t his Book of Wonder yet) 

The Man Who Understood Women (Coming) 

The American Idyll (In the bound volumes of 
the Atlantic Monthly) 

(We haven’t The Friendly Arctic but we have 
My Life with the Eskimos autographed by Mr. 
Stefansson when he was here speaking before 
the School two or three years ago.) 





IIo CREATIVE YOUTH 


XII. CREATIVE PROSE 


IN THESE pages we have purposely made our emphasis 
upon poetry. ‘This, however, must not be taken to mean 
either that we have neglected prose or that the method of 
handling is materially different. All of these poets write 
a good prose—story, essay, criticism—as we have illustrated 
fully enough in Lincoln Verse, Story, and Essay; some write 
exceptionally in either form; and many of our best essayists 
have not to our knowledge attempted verse at all. As a 
further illustration of the spirit of the instruction as applied 
to any type of imaginative writing, these paragraphs on 
“The Story and the Familiar Essay” are quoted from the 
former volume: 


| 


We insisted, simply, that the stories and essays (for the school 
magazine), no matter how imaginative, should come out of genuine 
experience; but the influence of the printed page—other and older 
persons’ experiences and attitudes—told enormously against us at 
first. Pupils wished to write upon themes that had interested 
them in the writings of adults—murder, hairbreadth escapes, the 
conventional cowboy, journalistic slapstick—without realizing 
that imitation always falls lamentably short; or they dropped back 
upon the one form—debarred early by the pupil editors—that must 
strike all young persons as an original idea, the wild thing of horror 
which turns out to be “‘only a dream!” 

Eventually our restriction told; the writers began to look about 
them. For that reason our material is mainly concerned with 
school and home life and vacation time, as it should be, for that 
sums up the larger part of the experiences which high-school 
pupils find time to have. ‘ 

Here, too, the method is writing and revision, many times re- 
peated. ‘The art of writing comes up for discussion, not as treated 
in a textbook, but as craftsmen talk when they meet and confer 
with one another. ‘The study of sentence and paragraph structure, 
for instance, rises invariably out of immediate needs. When a 
knowledge of the principles underlying the art seems useful— 
unity, coherence, suspense, contrast, climax, surprise, suggestion, 
and the like—they are taught; but often, as is the case with all true 


CREATIVE PROSE 1it 


artists, such principles are employed instinctively without the 
need of instruction. Certainly the method is not first a general 
teaching of principles, whether needed or not, and a later attempt 
to secure practice in their use. Nothing is insisted upon, as a 
matter of fact, but the effect of reality, the complete transfer 
of the feeling, the thought, and the ideals of the writer; but on the 
way toward that end we are often delayed by bad spelling, obscure 
punctuation, and other structural defects that demand instant 
remedy. And while we may stop to repair the damage, we do not 
even then lose sight of the object of the journey. 

In the creating of any kind of literature, the essence of the matter 
is to maintain a nice balance between instruction and the work of 
the artist. Art may not be coerced, but it may be enticed; and for 
a surprising little price it will labor beyond the dreams of Egypt’s 
taskmasters. Nor must it be benumbered by learning—the place 
of learning is another matter; nor, for any reason whatever, must 
it be denied its own expression, no matter how humble. 


Artistically America is coming of age. This volume of 
school verse is simply a sign of the times. One of the poets 
represented in this collection, Tom Prideaux, has touched 
this theme so deftly in his 4dam, published previously in 
Lincoln Verse, Story, and Essay, that by reprinting it here we 
may give an example of Lincoln School prose, and at the 
same time, present a picture of America turning at last to 
the arts after the necessary grubbing years of settling a 
continent: 


ADAM 
TOM PRIDEAUX 


“Each tiny blade of grass was precisely as long as one’s little 
finger. Each tiny bug that chanced to crawl on the apple tree was 
squashed. Hand work, too. Every bit of it.” 

“And who,” asked Agnes, “‘had such patience?” 

“The patient one, who squandered his care on the Garden ent 
was the Garden of Eden—was no other than Adam. He spent all 
of his time plucking blades and killing bugs until the garden was as 
flourishing as your Aunt Cynthia’s back yard. 


112 CREATIVE YOUTH 


“One day Adam came to the realization that the garden should 
have a wall. Lizards and snakes disturbed his nightly slumber.” 

“‘T izzzards and sssnakes,” hissed Agnes, shuddering. 

“A wall of some kind must be built. A flimsy one would un- 
doubtedly have served the purpose, but Adam’s mind did not run 
to flimsiness. There would be a great wall or no wall. 

“So, with this noble thought in his mind, he set about to find 
sufficient rocks. Adam was not content with little rocks, and often 
he would spend a week moving some gigantic boulder from its 
resting place to the site. At last, after many months of toiling, 
the stones were hauled. Now came the greatest task, erecting the 
wall. Mud served the purpose of holding the rocks together and 
it was anawful time Adam had mixing it to the proper consistency.” 

“T always have an awful time making mud pies,” mused Agnes. 

“After choosing a mammoth boulder for the corner stone, he 
proceeded to cover it with oozing handfuls of mire. He depended, 
of course, upon the sun to dry the mud, and many were the angry, 
words he muttered when it rained every day fora week. At last 
the sun came out, but it shone so hot after its absence that the clay 
cracked and crumbled. Can Adam be blamed if he felt dis- 
couraged? The rain and sun had made the grass fairly jump, and 
bugs hiked up and down the apple tree in great droves. But, 
despite all of this, Adam was not discouraged, for he was a most 
courageous man. Singing as he worked, he spent half of each day 
trimming the grass and squashing the bugs, and the other half 
building the wall.” 

“What did he sing?”” Agnes thought to herself. 

Al] went well for a week. ‘Things were being accomplished, 
slowly but surely. Then one evening when he sat down to wipe 
the perspiration from his brow, he chanced to notice, for the first 
time, the setting sun. The sky was stained with the most marvel- 
ous hues, and Adam thought how fine a sight it would be if he could 
reproduce them on his wall. Thus came the first desire to paint.” 

“T like to paint,” said Agnes. 

‘He sat pondering over the practicability of his scheme when the 
moon drifted up like a silver bowl and poured its liquid light over 
the earth. Now this was the first time Adam had ever noticed 
the moon, for he was always sleeping soundly at mocnrise and 
moonset. He felt enthralled, uplifted; his hand itched for some- 
thing. ‘Ah,’ he thought, ‘if I could put my feelings on the wall.’ 
Thus came the first desire to write. 


THE LITANIES OF YOUTH 113 


“The entire night he spent in making up a system of hiero- 
glyphics with which he might record those new and unexpressed 
feelings. At dawn the sun found him scratching queer experi- 
mental forms in the dirt. 

“With reluctance he turned back to drudgery. All the day he 
felt discontented with his work. It seemed twice as hard as ever 
before. And when night came Adam had accomplished very little. 
The desire to paint and write gnawed his soul. He could not sleep.” 

“Silly dreamer!’’ said Agnes. 

“No, he did not dream. Instead he invented a cement-mixer, a 
tree-sprayer, and a lawn-mower. ‘The next day he was delighted 
to see how well they worked, accomplishing more in three hours 
than his hands could have done in four weeks. And that’s how he 
found time to paint and write.” 

“Well, it’s a good thing he thought up those things,”’ concluded 
Agnes, ‘‘for he’d ’a’ been working forever in that mud.” 


XII. Tue Liranies or Youtu 


OF course, if young persons must be seen, they should, 
at the very least, not be heard; and it goes without saying 
that they should speak only when spoken to. A nice doc- 
trine, and comfortable. And good sense, too; for what has 
youth to say that is not said better by the elders? It was 
in the spirit, therefore, of time saving and efficiency that in 
the past our forebears have advised the young person to 
shut up and stay shut. 

However, the general enforcement of the commandment 
to shut up has prevented us from knowing what youth could 
really do if allowed to speak on terms of equality with the 
other branches of the human race. Oh, not that nonage 
does not break loose—especially in urban America—and set 
up his caterwauling to high Heaven. ‘The point is that he 
rarely does it on terms of equality; he is too aware in every 
flaming gesture that he is breaking a law; that, in spite of 
his loud laugh, his elders do not respect him. This silent 
condemnation—and his secret acquiescence in its value— 
acts ever to thwart him in the attempt to express his genuine 


114 CREATIVE YOUTH 


self. Only when they are brought up fearlessly to be 
themselves, protected from patronizing adults, or when in 
their play they forget that they are inferior, only in these 
two situations does youth give us a glimpse of what is as yet 
an undiscovered or badly charted region. 

The two child-poets of our time illustrate this point of 
view. Hardly had we got over our surprise at the clear 
young freshness of Hilda Conkling when Nathalia Crane’s 
nine-year-old muse set us agasp. In the preface to Natha- 
lia’s The Janitor’s Boy and Other Poems, William Rose 
Benét admits the right of the young poet to sit at table with 
her elders, but throws up his hands at any explanation of 
the mystery; for, keep in mind, Nathalia Crane is unlike 
anything in the way of Young Poesie that has yet happened. 
Remarkable as Hilda is in her own imaginative world, her 
work keeps within the accepted limits of childhood experi- 
ence, like the early paintings of Pamela Bianco; but Nathalia 
has the wisdom of an ancient elf child. And it 1s that un- 
canny child-maturity that I wish for a moment to examine. 

The Flathouse Roof, with its “my heart is all aflutter like 
the washing on the line” might have been done by Arthur 
Guiterman, Dorothy Parker, or any other precocious adult, 
but Old Maid’s Reverie is quite another kettle of fish. Her 
first line is a spinster’s autobiography! 


I’m tired of mirthless mirrors and their hostile heresies. 


“I’m tired of mirthless mirrors and their hostile heresies,” 
cries that honest woman who would “trade an old maid’s 
theories for a rood of Soap Suds Row” with its “sunflowers 
and the shanties” and the “horde of baby banshees”— 
especially the baby banshees!—who plans revolt, therefore, 
and would betake herself to a “‘disarrayed domain.” 


And shoonless dance the saraband in some assuaging lane. 


THE LITANIES OF YOUTH 115 


(Assuaging lane! Think of it!) She would go there, this 
unassuaged woman, “in a barefoot mood”’ and—here is the 
astounding last line— 


As one who missed the rubrics in the litanies of youth. 


In her slender volume, a mixture of startling and ordinary, 
Nathalia has achieved distinction in at least six poems: 
The Blind Girl, Prescience, The Symbols, The Road to Roslyn, 
Old Maid’s Reverie, and My Husbands. ‘These should give 
her work a high rank among the best contemnorarv Ameri- 
can verse. Consider only one of them, and the discerning 
need no further proof: 


My Husspanps 


I hear my husbands marching 
The zons all adown: 

The shepherd boys and princes— 
From cavern unto crown. 


I hear in soft recession 

The praise they give to me; 
I hear them chant my titles 
From all antiquity. 


But never do I answer, 

I might be overheard; 

Lose Love’s revised illusions 
By one unhappy word. 


I sit, a silent siren, 

And count my cavaliers; 

The men I wed in wisdom, 
The boys who taught me tears. 


To some I gave devotion, 
To some I kinked the knee; 
But there was one old wizard 


Who laid his spells on me. 


116 CREATIVE YOUTH 


He showed me like a master 

That one rose makes a gown; 
That looking up to Heaven | 

Is merely looking down. 


He marked me for the circle, 
Made magic in my eyes}; 
He won me by revealing 
The truth in all his lies. 


So, when I see that wizard 
Among the marchers dim, 

J make the full court curtsy 
In fealty to him. 


Now how, we exclaim, did such extraordinary expression 
come from a child? My answer is to admit that it is ex- 
traordinary for any age, but to deny that it is remarkable 
for a child. My guess is that hundreds of children have 
so expressed themselves, or might easily have so expressed 
themselves, but have lacked a channel to publicity. For 
note, that Hilda’s mother, a distinguished poet herself, was 
fortunately by to take down those first exquisite child 
fancies;! and in Nathalia’s case there was first the gift of a 
typewriter, then the fortuitous impulse to send a contribu- 
tion to the poetry editor of a newspaper, but, most fortunate 
of accidents, her luck in getting her first verses into the 
hands of so discerning an editor as Mr. Edmund Leamy of 
the Sun. Any one of these happenings omitted and either 
poet might have produced vigorously for a few months and 
then have turned to other characteristic child-like play; and 
the astonishing product would have been forever lost. 

The theory of the present writer that many of the so- 
called inglorious Miltons were born primarily to blush un- 


\‘Hilda tells her poems, and the method of it is this: They come out in the course of conver- 
sation, and Mrs. Conkling is so often engaged in writing that there is nothing to be remarked if 
she scribbles absently while talking to the little girls. But this scribbling is often a complete draft 
of the poem.”’—Amy Lowell, in the Preface to Poems by a Little Girl. 


THE LITANIES OF YOUTH 117 


printed, led him in 1920, among other reasons, to accept the 
invitation of the Director of the Lincoln School, to carry on 
an experiment in creative writing with the pupils of the 
high-school classes. The story of that five-year venture, 
published now in connection with a remarkable anthology of 
student verse, gives some proof that while the gift of poesie 
may not perhaps be taught, some of the litanies of youth 
may at least be preserved from the desert air of oblivion. 

The Lincoln School verse is not the exceptional product of 
an exceptional school. No; the Lincoln poets are serious 
illustration of a faith that a higher grade of artistic achieve- 
ment is possible than is commonly permitted by the schools. 
They explain why it is that we do not look upon the work 
of such distinguished young poets as Hilda Conkling and 
Nathalia Crane—and Helen Douglas Adam of Scotland 
whose Elfin Pedlar and Tales Told by Pixie Pool was brought 
out in America last year by Putnam’s—as the product merely 
of genius, but rather, as a natural and appropriate perform- 
ance which seems exceptional because the creative work of 
other youth has not made itself known. 

One must remember, in this connection, that age has con- 
stantly belittled youth; that, conventionally, the young per- 
son may not, without impertinence, be considered as having 
superior skill, knowledge, judgment, or taste. Shelley, 
everyone knows now, was put out of Oxford for thinking. 
Yet the inner spirit of youth is as old and as wise as it ever 
will be, lacking only the power to manipulate things, par- 
ticularly word-things; and even here, it has more gift than 
we commonly allow. 

In poetry, at least, we should have long since become used 
to the superiority of youth. To Helen, The Blessed Damozel, 
Thanatepsis, When We Two Parted, of no mean rank among 
the poems of the language, were written by boys. An 
astonishing list could be made of notable poems of our own 
day that were composed, really, by gifted children. Percy 


118 CREATIVE YOUTH 


MacKaye was a mere lad when he wrote the chorals to his 
father’s Columbus; Stephen Benet composed Five Men and 
Pompey while still in the preparatory school at Summerville, 
Georgia; Edna Millay’s Renascence, exquisite in contempo- 
rary American poetry, was already a printed book when the 
author was just turning from her teens. Poets have always 
been free spirits; creative youth therefore never, never, 
never shall be slaves—even to Time. 


XIV. TRADITION AND THE NExT STEP 


From the hundreds of sympathetic teachers who have 
come from far and near to watch us at work and to help us 
with suggestion, the most common remark 1s that our ma- 
terials and our methods are so different from the prescribed 
English course in their schools that, conceding our results 
in happy youth daily amassing literary wealth, such ideal 
conditions of work are not for them. ‘The selections of 
literature which they most use in their classes, they claim, 
are decided not by an experimentation with the pupils’ 
ability to enjoy, but by the adult’s notion of what is proper, 
and the adult of a previous generation at that; grammar and 
the rules of rhetoric are studied as things in themselves, 
applicable on a given scheduled day to all pupils irrespective 
of known aptitude or needs; composition, in spite of much 
new freedom, is still held within the polite limits of prescribed 
schoolroom requirements. “We have an English Course,” 
they say sadly. 

We teachers are of necessity a tradition-ridden craft. 
The thing called the English Course was handed to us ready- 
made by the generation immediately before us; it is a liturgy 
and a catechism put together by diets and councils of the 
past, and bears beautiful evidences of the pious hands of 
other days and of the outworn ceremonies of another faith. 
For a half century The Lady of the Lake (published in 1810) 


has been almost a sacred book. In some elementary schools 


TRADITION AND THE NEXT STEP 119 


it was the only evidence of “‘literature.”” For the whole of 
the eighth school year it was studied word by word, memo- 
rized, scanned, and parsed. Final examinations were based 
upon it; entrance to the high school was denied to those who 
knew it not; and book companies were busy with edited 
texts. At one hundred and fifteen years of age the ““Lady”’ 
is still with us. To be sure she doesn’t monopolize all the 
period given to the study of our noble literature, but she 
sits comfortably at the side. She threatens already with 
Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with America to become one 
of those reverent works once living in the world of men now 
found only in the schoolroom. It would be an act of im- 
piety to remove her. “Respect the aged!’ cried Kipling’s 
Mugger. “Respect the aged!’”! 

But let us be fair. 

The introduction of The Lady of the Lake into the English 
course represents the fine attempt some sixty years ago to 
bring into the classroom the best poetry of the hour. In the 
classroom it stayed, however, long after that hour had 
struck, reminding us of the special prayer for one of the 
queens of Henry VIII which, in one Cambridge church, still 
remains as part of the morning service. The Swiss Family 
Robinson is another survival (cousin to the Rollo books); 
and, in the classroom, much of the roar of Daniel Webster 
still holds over into a time which has learned to be suspi- 
cious of oratory. The schoolroom emphasis upon American 
literature, the good and the mediocre, is an echo of the 
post-bellum days, at that time a very proper sign of our over- 
whelming sense of nationalism. It was not, then, an over- 
emphasis; it is now. Our grammar is the Lindley Murray 
litany of the late eighteenth century, a one-time sincere 
attempt to learn to use the mother-tongue with distinction. 
Pee arene irae Carn hianncies aice cinien panini on PAR 


all the junk and jumble of odds and ends—including ‘‘civics” and ‘‘etiquette’’!—that inartistic 
administrators have for years been putting into it. 


120 CREATIVE YOUTH 


“We study Latin via grammar,” said Murray; “let us not 
neglect English.” We revere this fine beginning of the 
care for the common speech; we still have the aim of our 
forefathers; we question only their instrument. 

What, really, are we teachers striving for in the English 
Course? I speak only for the teachers of the elementary 
grades and the high-school years. Our first aim is to instruct 
this generation of children in the art of written and oral 
speech. Sometimes I am almost willing to believe with 
Professor Lounsbury that this cannot be done. In spite of 
our striving, illiteracy envelops us like a pestilence—even 
us. If our children would only get themselves born into 
the proper homes, and stay there in between school sessions, 
we might offer a feeble guarantee to show a result. And 
if they would only practise what we so diligently preach! 
All the world of fresh spontaneous out-of-doors conspires 
against our perfect utterance. We try to hold our flickering 
flambeaux of learning in the “well of English undefiled” 
—excellent figure!—where the atmosphere is characteristi- 
cally carbon dioxide. 

Our failure here should have been expected; but we are 
not quite failing. In composition teaching we are breaking 
mightily with tradition. In no department of study has 
the new note of efficiency been more productive. The whole 
country is alive to the necessity of achieving a practical 
result in ‘“‘composition.” There are more suggestions for 
reform than any of us can take count of; and surely every 
other pedagogue has written a textbook. Compositions on 
the “Progress of Art and Science” and the ‘Comparison 
between Tennyson and Cowper”? are thoroughly obsolete; 
as are such titles as ‘‘Friendship,” ‘‘The Pen and Sword,” 
and “States’ Rights.” Our children write sprightly letters 
to flesh-and-blood friends; they construct real stories and 
print them; they keep minutes of actual meetings, report for 
the papers, compile a daily journal, write up the trade or 


TRADITION AND THE NEXT STEP I21 


profession that already has begun to call them. And, as 
we here prove, they write poetry. 

No longer is the ‘‘composition” a worrisome task dug 
out of books, tinkered by sympathetic elders, sweated over 
until Sunday midnight and brought in with a gasp on Mon- 
day morning. It is now a bit of joy done in regular minutes 
of the school session. And it is done naturally, as you and 
I write compositions—frst, planned and thought over, then 
jotted down hastily, scrawled in pencil, feverish with the 
impulse of creation; here no thought of good script, or spell- 
ing, or fair margins; the bounding idea is spilled out on the 
page in gross quantity, sprawling, illegible, warm with life. 
Then it is sorted out, crossed off, interlarded, padded, 
punched, caressed into shape, recopied with care, punctuated, 
spelled, paragraphed, and grammared. Now comes the 
kind critic—we strive to be kind—who praises with faint, 
very faint damns—the ugly word is Alexander Pope’s— 
and gives the young author a glimpse of the long, toiling, 
joyful road toward that most fascinating of arts, the craft of 
the writer. If we are not pedants there is some hope for us 
with children; if we can write a pictured bit of moving Eng- 
lish ourselves, we can fix them rigid with desire, especially 
if we can do it right before them on the blackboard; but if 
we have luckily published anything, outside of pedagogical 
treatises, we can have them dancing after us like a pageant 
of charmed vipers. 

The main trouble with us is that we teachers talk and 
write in the style of yesteryear. Our letters, our contri- 
butions to educational magazines, our very talk, are grim, 
perfect eighteenth century. Children soon learn to write 
that sort of composition. Boys will compose Addisonian 
paragraphs on sunsets and landscapes, without really caring 
a tuppence. 

Would you and [ accept what they write to their chums? 
I quote from an authentic letter: 


122 CREATIVE YOUTH 


She’s a pipin old man and no mistake and shes got a pair of 
lamps that would jar you some peach I| want to tell you come over 
and get known. 


_ This Don Juan hasn’t a mark of punctuation to his name 
and no noticeable literary grace, but he has an eye for beauty. 
I happen to know that he is clever enough to write a correct 
school theme on “The Leaves of Autumn,” but obviously 
his heart is not there. 

Our second aim is to discover to this generation of children 
the make-up of their own unconscious utterance. I shall 
presume that we have given up the theory that we learn to 
speak and write via the analyses of grammar. Children 
who know grammar do not necessarily speak correctly; and 
many speak well who know not grammar. Good speech is 
a matter of the ear, a linguistic habit; and much of the 
beauty and effectiveness of language has nothing at all to 
do with the proper ordering of noun and verb. The vul- 
garest utterance may be at the same time good grammar and 
bad usage. ‘Tone, rhythm, modulation, enunciation, polite 
idiom, the courtesies of gentlefolk have almost nothing to 
learn from grammar; and these are the meat and substance 
of the art of communication. 

_ Nevertheless, taking the language apart and putting it 
together should be an exhilarating operation. It should be 
full of surprises. The phenomenon of ‘‘me” and “I”— 
two words for the same thing; of active and passive voice— 
two ways of expressing the same idea; transitive and in- 
transitive verb—strange, inexplicable habits of words whose 
histories are lost in antiquity; the dative and locative sur- 
vivals of older speech—all this should be as interesting and 
profitable as the study of our instincts and emotions. Gram- 
mar will not give us the fluidity of unerring utterance, but it 
should tell us much of our ways of thinking and make us 
conscious—if it doesn’t make us self-conscious by coming too 
early—conscious of the form and mold of thought. 


TRADITION AND THE NEXT STEP 123 


But even here we senselessly follow tradition. Only in 
your day and mine we discovered that ‘‘thou talkest’’ was 
two hundred years obsolete and removed it from our study 
books. May I ask the reader to conjugate the present tense 
of “talk”? I talk; you talk; he talks? Not so; that is a 
good old form, still used in special cases, and the invariable 
token of the book-taught foreigner. “I go to my house now. 
I take my book,” he says when he means, ‘‘I am going to 
my house now. I amtaking my book.” ‘The present form, 
put usually in a footnote as an irregularity, is, | am talking; 
you are talking; he is talking. Much of the fun of Hashi- 
mura Togo is in his book grammar: “‘I hear noise. I go. 
I look. It is my friend. He soups. He soups loud.” Of 
course, he should have said, “He is souping.”?’ Grammars 
give as the regular interrogative form: 


Do I drink? 
Do you drink? 
Does he drink? 


unmindful of the horrid suggestion. The prevailing inter- 
rogative present is: 


Am I drinking? 
Are you drinking? 
Is he drinking? 


The same grammarians make much of a to-do over the 
agreement of noun and verb in “person.” ‘Their aim, re- 
member, is to keep one from vulgar error. It would be 
almost impossible for any one not a professor to name offhand 
a common instance of non-agreement in person. ‘That 
so-called agreement is a very ghostly presence; it is a pity 
to fright very little children with it. 

Nevertheless, the children are forced daily to recognize 
the almost meaningless attribute of “person”? along with 
the dead abstraction of “objective case” in nouns. Again 


124 CREATIVE YOUTH 


the aim is to save them from incorrect usage. (But they 
could not possibly make a mistake in the use of the objec- 
tive case of nouns; and you could not. Even the professor 
of English could not.) We may be thankful, however, that 
the grammarian is not consistent, or we should have “case” 
and “gender” for all our adjectives; for, of course, you are 
aware that in the sentence, ‘Mathilda spanked her charm- 
ing sister,” “charming” is objective case, and, obviously, 
feminine gender. 

Teachers, like other folks, do not always see things as 
they really are, the most difficult operation in all creation. 
When little Gretchen says, “My sister sings good,” Miss 
Alice, of Room No. 8, is disturbed, as she should be; but she 
fails to see things as they really are when she admonishes, 
“ How will you ever get along with German in the high school, 
if you don’t know English grammar?” Miss Alice should 
know that the German teacher would have an easier time 
with Gretchen than with Miss Alice herself. ““My sister 
sings good,” is already three quarters German, “Meine 
Schwester singt gut.” 

_ Our final aim is to acquaint this generation of children 
with the best English of the past, to thrill them and so 
transform them forever. And what is the best English of 
the past? Everyone knows that for the fifth year of school 
life it is Longfellow; for the sixth year, Bryant; for the 
seventh year, Whittier (because we are studying the quarrel 
over slavery); for the eighth year, Poe and Holmes; for the 
ninth year, American literature with strong emphasis upon 
the colonial and revolutionary output; for the tenth, elev- 
enth, and twelve years, college entrance requirements. 
Toward the pre-high-school period and the first high-school 
year we act as though the large heritage of British literature 
were not English at all. While the American boy is held 
to Longfellow et al., the English boy would be at home with 
Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shakespeare, Mil 


TRADITION AND THE NEXT STEP 125 


ton, Lamb, De Foe, De Quincey, Blake, Arnold, Browning, 
Rossetti, Burns, Hood, Kingsley, Tennyson, and Swinburne. 

And would the portions of Longfellow ¢z al., set for home 
consumption be the best English even of those writers? 
We should have The Psalm of Life and The Village Blacksmith 
—frankly doggerel, the English tell us; but few teachers 
even know the incidental music to Longfellow’s Dante. 
Here is the prelude: 


Oft have I seen at some cathedral door 

A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat, 

Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet 
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor 
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o’er; 

Far off the noises of the world retreat; 

The loud vociferations of the street 
Become an undistinguishable roar. 

So, as I enter here from day to day, 

And leave my burden at this minster gate, 

Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray, 

The tumult of the time disconsolate 

To inarticulate murmurs dies away, 

While the eternal ages watch and wait. 


We might have by heart Maud Muller—‘ simply bad,” 
writes one critic—but we might forget to put into the 
language soul of ready youth the magnificent pathos of 
Whittier’s Proem, that honest and melodious apologia. 

Of Poe we would present The Raven, the mechanical Bells 
and the juvenile Annabel Lee, but it is not likely that we 
ourselves would thrill to 


The sound of the rain 

Which leaps down to the flower, 
And dances again 

In the rhythm of the shower; 


from Al Aaraaf, whose publication in 1829 was “the birth 
of a star, set in the heavens secure amid the constellations 


126 CREATIVE YOUTH 


where are Coleridge, Rossetti, Shelley . . . perfect if 
not of the first magnitude.” 

These children of ours need no interpreter for The Bells, 
nor are they helped much by the stage business of genuine 
tongues of brass and iron, pealing an obligato to the teach- 
ers dramatic voice. But aid they demand for Spirits of 
the Dead, The City of the Sea, To Helen, and the incomparable 
Israfel if we would draw them into “the region which is 
Holy Land.” 

I need not follow this thought further. ‘The “best” of 
Longfellow et al. would be the conventional selection. Fur- 
ther, of American poets added, we make much of the styles 
of yesteryear (Hvangeline, for example) and ‘“‘ poems distilled 
from poems,” ‘“‘the swarms of reflectors,” “admirers, im- 
porters, obedient persons” that “‘make but the soil of litera- 
ture,” but we do not know the exquisite Lanier—unless we 
teach in the South. And we should not dare to select from 
Whitman; probably sharing the belief of those who do not 
read him, that he, the most non-moral of singers (that 
“Gott bedrunkener Mann’’) is immoral and irreligious! 

Seeking the “best,” teachers would never agree with 
this critic—John Macy—who writes: 


Three volumes of unimpeachable poetry have been written in 
America: “Leaves of Grass,”’the thin volume of Poe, and the poetry 
of Sidney Lanier . . . to make an adequate fourth one would 
have to assemble in an anthology the finest poems from lesser 
lyrists, beginning, perhaps, with Bryant’s ‘‘Water Fowl” and in- 
cluding, if not ending with, the remarkable poem published only 
last year,” ““The Singing Man,” by Josephine Preston Peabody 
(Mrs. Marks). And a beautiful book that anthology would be, 
for it would contain Freneau’s “Wild Honey Suckle,’’ Parson’s 


“On a Bust of Dante,” and ‘‘ Dirge for One Who Fell in Battle,” 


1John Macy, in a book that may not be ignored, The Spirit of American Literature, now to be 
had in The Modern Library (Boni and Liveright). 

*The Spirit of American Literature. He is writing, of course, in 1912 and therefore would 
know nothing of the outburst of poetry that was to make memorable the next decade in America. 
We should, therefore, add much to his list now. 


TRADITION AND THE NEXT STEP 127 


Timrod’s ‘‘Cotton Boll,” Stedman’s ‘John Brown” and ‘Helen 
Keller,” Aldrich’s “Fredericksburg” and “‘Identity,”’ Sill’s ‘The 
Fool’s Prayer,” Gilder’s sonnet “On the Life Mask of Lincoln,” 
a score of marvelous little poems by Father Tabb, James Whit- 
comb Riley’s “South Wind and the Sun,” Emma Lazarus’s 
“Venus of the Louvre,” L. F. Tooker’s ‘The Last Fight,” a dozen 
lyrics of Richard Hovey; William Vaughn Moody’s ‘‘Gloucester 
Moors,” four or five poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson, and 
some other verse drawn from the younger rather than the older 
poets. 


And all the while we Americans have not touched the 
great river of so-called “‘English Literature.” The point to 
emphasize is that we have not thunderingly questioned the 
taste of the past, the traditional literary excellence of our 
forebears. ‘There is another point, a corollary; we teach- 
ers of English do not know—do not know with the “thrill” 
—those symphonies of our mother tongue which range be- 
yond the comprehension of immaturity, without which, as 
an aim of all our striving, we cannot move forward at all. 
Our loved literature is juvenile. Teachers confess it. 
“The poems that have most influenced my life,” they write 
frankly to my constant questionnaire, “are The Village 
Blacksmith, The Psalm of Life, The Bells, The Barefoot Boy, 
The Last Leaf, and Old Ironsides.”’ ‘This is an average list. 
I forbear to read that of the really depraved; it would in- 
clude such naive admissions as, Woodman, Spare That Tree, 
The Old Oaken Bucket, and such frail lyrics as The Father 
of His Country, which begins: 


He was our president, 

The first that ever run, 
He never, never told a lie, 
His name was Washington. 


Our aim is to acquaint the children of this generation with 
the best English of the past, and to have it thrill them and 


128 CREATIVE YOUTH 


so transform them forever. Do we thrill them? More 
frequently, we drill them. Do we transform them forever? 
Indeed we do. Staunch opponents are they of Milton, 
Chaucer, George Eliot, and Addison—forever. Somehow 
we cannot stop them from caring mightily for Macbeth and 
Julius Cesar, for Dumas, Zane Grey, and the Saturday 
Evening Post. 

We are a tradition-ridden craft. The hopeful sign is that 
suddenly we have become aware of that fact. Our eyes are 
opened. We are keenly self-critical, alert to improve; we 
frankly take the efficiency test to ourselves and own up to 
our failures. There is no more helpful symptom in all 
pedagogy equal to the gatherings of teachers dotted all over 
these United States every school day in the year and most 
of the vacation days, teachers sitting at school desks them- 
selves, under the instruction of wiser teachers. In some com- 
munities the teacher goes to school one month in each year; 
and in those communities a current of fresh ideas is slowly 
but surely combating unprofitable traditions. 

The glory of Ichabod Crane has departed, along with 
the tyranny and pompous cock-surety of his class. We are 
students now, learners, eager to know, irritatingly inquisi- 
tive, willing to change, tolerant, unbiased and determined. 
With these qualities nothing can stop us, not even the 
English Course. 

Important as will be the work of experimental classes in 
which new and more appropriate materials are tried out, 
classes where the notion of the range of youth-ability is 
being incredibly enlarged—as, we hope, this volume illus- 
trates; important and imperative as these exploratory classes 
undoubtedly are, the case for the country at large rests 
ultimately with the teacher at large. 

We are moving slowly forward, but the fulcrum of the 
lever lies now, undoubtedly, in the schools for the training 
of teachers. Many of these institutions—fortunately the 


TRADITION AND THE NEXT STEP 129 


older and smaller ones—are hopelessly tradition ridden, 
with teachers unskilled themselves except, possibly, in a 
useless textbook lore; but the newer and larger schools of 
education, with their stimulating summer schools, are draw- 
ing the ambitious dissatisfied teacher from every part of 
the land. The college does not offer us much hope in even 
the near future, for its traditional emphasis is upon scholar- 
ship, which, alas, has too little to do with zsthetic values. 
As to the better teachers themselves, the willingness and 
the readiness are there. They crowd into classes for self- 
improvement, at night, on holidays, and during their vaca- 
tion time, spending of their slender store, doing their share 
in the forward movement toward a new spiritualization of 
public education. The length of the next stride, in the 
judgment of those who are most seriously concerned with 
the outcome of the free-school experiment in America, will 
depend enormously upon the power of those who, for the 
coming decade, have the heightened responsibility of adding 
to the personal equipment of those ambitious leaders among 
the teachers themselves; for we must never forget the stub- 
born fact that confronts us in all our enthusiastic discussion 
of things educational: the kind of school will always depend 
upon the kind of teacher in the classroom. | 


ee 
¥ 


ik 


Ae AY 





LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE 
1920-1923 


: ip me 


py Niele | 


Lae 
Nae 





LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE 


1920-1923 


T IS natural for me to feel pride in my poets. On the 
other hand, as I announced at the start, they were poets 
when I met them. I take no credit for my gifts but only for 
my discernment; and I have wished to express myself here 
not as their teacher but as their friend— WITTER BYNNER: 
On Teaching the Young Laurel to Shoot. 


SUNRISE 


I’vE never seen the great sun rise, 
For then I am in bed; 

The sands of slumber in my eyes 
Hold down my drowsy head. 


I think the sun climbs up the sky 
And throws the clouds away, 
Then girds her flaming tunic high 
And strides to meet the day. 


Soft-touched by birds’ wings is her head; 
Her feet caressed by trees; 
She turns their leaves to gold and red 


And stoops to drink the seas. 
KATHARINE KOSMAK. 


BLOSSOMS 


Ou! A bud all green and white, 
Twisted like a shell! 
Something strange will happen soon; 
I can always tell! 
133 


134 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


Leaves are crowding thick and fast— 
Stems are brittle things! 

Grave responsibility 
High position brings. 


Something stirs against the dawn— 
Is it bird or bee? 
Or a purple-hearted song 
Blown for you and me? 
VALERIE FRANKEL. 


PRINCESSES 


In THE day they stand by the lake, 
Rustling their leaves when the wind comes, 
Tall and slim and proud; 

But in the night they are princesses 
Clothed in white robes, 

Dancing to strange music, 

Waving green draperies. 


Long ago they were maidens, 

But they were haughty and too proud, 

So were changed into trees 

By a wizard old and brown; 

And only in the night may they go back again. 


In the day they stand by the lake, 
Rustling their leaves when the wind comes, 


Tall and slim and proud. 
Emma Rounpns. 


WIND IN APRIL 


Ou, THE trees and the hills and I, 
And the cool wind rushing by, 
Ruffling my hair, 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1920-1923 135 


Rustling the trees, 
Fluttering into a mischievous breeze; 
Oh, the hills and the trees and I, 
And the quick teasing wind tugging by. 
ELEANOR BARNES. 


MEETING 


SOFTLY it toyed 

With the curled ringlets 

Of the young, green grasses; 
Coyly it flirted 

With the young, green trees; 
Now patting them on the cheek, 
Now dancing away 

And looking coquettishly back 
Over one shoulder; 

But when it came to the brook 
It just spent its joyousness 

In little puffs, 

This young, green spring wind! 


ERM. 
RED MAGNOLIAS 


I 

Creamy petals blushing on the outside crimson deep, 
As if the wind had toyed too much with them 
And dropped soft-spoken words into them; 

Yet white inside as if that soul did sleep. 


II 
Tossing red mantillas in the air, 
Haughty sefioritas, dancing, swaying; 
To the world’s pleading saying, 
“We do not care! Donot care! Do not care!” 
KATHARINE KOSMAK. 


136 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


CITY NIGHTS 


Wuen the lights of the city are bright and they gleam, 


And the moon looks down on the level street, 


I always dream the selfsame dream: 
Of hills that are wide and of woods that are green 


And of places where two brooks meet. 
James FLEXNER. 


TH Dee AD SELON DER: 


Tue big bull lazily flapped his ear, 

There was nothing on earth could make him fear; 
This way and that his trunk he bent, 

Then all in a moment he caught our scent. 


He spread in a fan his ears so large 

And, trumpeting madly, turned to charge; 
Spitefully spiteful my rifle spoke, 

But the big bull’s charge, it never broke. 


Spitefully spiteful I shot again, 

And the big bull bellowed aloud in pain; 
Spitefully spiteful I shot once more, 

And the big bull rolled on the jungle floor. 


I gazed in awe on the fallen king, 
And wondered how much his tusks would bring. 
WILLIAM SARGENT. 


THE AFTERGLOW 


Tue purple shadows fall on hill and dale 
And breezes softly blow; 

Rosy tints and golden amber pale 
In the sky above us glow. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1920-1923 137 


The sun’s richest glories are left behind, 
They sparkle in the stream below, 
No beauty can compare, I find, 
With the evening’s afterglow. 
BEATRICE WADHAMS. 


BROADWAY 
Night Traffic in the Rain 


Twistinc paths of golden light, — 
Among them ruby trails 

That pierce the black and shining night 
Like darting comet tails. 


Twilight 
Roaring, clanking, 
Sirens screaming 
In confusion; 
Pink and yellow, 
Shifting, gleaming 
In profusion. 


Above the deepening blue 
The stars blink calmly through. 
Tom PRIDEAUX. 


GOLD 


I tay and looked upon the sunset sky; 

The sun had rolled 

Into a sea of glass; 

The soft attendant clouds had passed it by 

And what remained was one clear scintillating mass 


Of gold. 


I saw the pale gold, like a star’s last rays. 
The daffodil-like gold-dust of the fays, 


138 CREATIVE YOUTH 


The gold that ladies fair 

Let sparkle in their hair 

So dark-eyed princes from a foreign land 
Might fight with sorcerers to win their hand; 
Pale fairy gold. 


Green-gold—mysterious, jewel-beset, 

Which makes one think of great Kings, lying yet 

Within a pyramid upon the sands 

Of Egypt—green, sinister gold which sheds a baleful light, 
As those dark almond eyes of Emperors might 

When their uncounted years of rest are ended by alien hands; 
Dark, greenish gold. 


Gray-yellow gold, 

In bracelets, earrings, ducats, necklets, rings, 
Cathedral’s vessels, treasures, holy things, 
Down in the hold 

Of a ship that flew 

While the great waves rolled 

And the wild wind blew; 

Great lumps of gold 


Stolen year by year 
And dumped in the hold 


By a buccaneer, 

Till the drunken crew 
Went to Davy Jones 

And the gold sank, too, 
With the dead men’s bones; 
Yellow pirate gold. 


Nuggets of gold, in rocky dancing streams 
That in the West 

Lure men to follow tantalizing dreams; 
To know no rest; 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1920-1923 


Sickness, starvation, never-ceasing toil, 
Horrors untold; 

And yet with bleeding hands they tear the soil 
That hides the gold, 

The gold of hardships, rocky impure gold. 


Now red, red gold, 

Giving a smoldering glowing light 

Like candles for the dead 

That burn within a church at night 

So purely softly red; 

The gold that three great Wise Men brought, 
The gold of a star that smiled, 

For it knew that the glorious King they sought 
Was only a little child; 

The gold of love, red gold. 


Slowly the sky turned deepest purple blue; 
The gold, like sails of galleons, slipped away 
Into the land where our own night is day; 
And I turned homeward, wondering if they 
Who live beyond the ocean’s edge—if they 
Would see it too. 


139 


KATHARINE KOSMAK. 


FIRE PICTURES 


Lyinc by the fireside, 
Looking at the fire, 

Lots of things can happen 
As the flames leap higher! 


A warrior leads a fiery band 

Down to a royal shining bark 

That flies the flag of the Fire-elf Land; 
And it goes sailing to the Dark 


140 CREATIVE YOUTH 
Country behind the Big Back Log 


Where a host awaits in grim array. 
For the gallant vessel of flame 
Bears what to them is a hated name. 
Then—there’s a crash, as of a fray! 
A great flame from the town! 
And the Big Back Log falls down. 
Emma Rounps. 


A SONG FOR CLEMENT MOORE 


(Each year on Christmas Eve the children of the Church of the Intercession, 
New York City, march with lighted candles in a gay procession to the grave of 
Clement Moore, the author of The Night Before Christmas. There they sing happy 
carols and leave each a wreath. The writer of this Song has been one of those 
children from her earliest memory of Christmas time.) 


Down the lanes so long and white 
Come the candles burning bright, 
For ’tis the eve of Christmas Day, 
And, children we, a wreath would lay 
Upon the grave of Clement Moore 
Who wrote a tale of Christmas lore, 
How Santa came on Christmas Eve 
Gifts for little tots to leave. 
Children’s faces bright with cheer, 
Chanting Noel carols dear. 

Softly, silently falls the snow 
Covering all with mantle low. 


The last carol has been sung 

And on the stone our wreaths are hung; 
Left the cheering children then 

The wreaths, the grave, the quiet glen 
Where happy rests dear Clement Moore 
Who wrote a tale of Christmas lore, 
How Santa came on Christmas eve 


Gifts for little tots to leave. 
CHARLOTTE BAYNE. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1920-1923 14 


LA POINTE DU RAZ 
Brittany 


Rock upon rock, crag upon crag, 

Piled by the unseen hand of God; 
Tossed by that mighty giant hand, 

At the world’s end, untouched, untrod. 


Against those walls the waves dash high 
And boil around the hidden cliffs; 
Lord, pity the poor fishermen 
Out in their little fishing skiffs! 


How many, for a few small fish, 
Give up their lives on yonder coast? 
Few pass that rocky sentinel 
Guarding his lonely, silent post. 
ELEANOR FLEXNER., 


THE SELF-DECEIVERS 


So MAY we call that intervening age 

When interest in nursery rhymes has passed 
And, to the woman’s chapter come at last, 

They needs must stop before they turn the page. 
From out their babyhood and childhood stray 
And gather some forgotten habit, here 

And there a little whim, and these, held dear, 
They keep close in their hearts and whirl away 


They seem to think of childhood as a time 

Which must be overcome. Their only thought 

Is to attain the heights for which they climb, 

And for that carefree innocence give naught; 

Until they gain their dizzy heights sublime 

And find that carefreeness was what they sought! 
KATHARINE KOSMAK, 


142 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


THE PIXIE MOMENT 


A MOMENT comes, just as the sunbeams change 
From gold to red, and shining through the mist 
Among the trees, thin as a baby’s wrist, 

A moment when the friendly woods are strange. 


Hung on a log you'll see a fungus cup 
Belonging to a traveling pixie who 

Has hung it there to catch the dewdrops up, 
When he returns, to find it full of dew, 
He’ll ask his brother pixies there to sup— 
And if you wait you'll be invited too. 


Around the stump of some primeval tree 

Whose mighty limbs have fallen to decay 

The pixie’s twenty daughters you will see, 

Who circle round the giant in their play, 

But shyly turn to mushrooms, instantly, 

If but they see you standing in their way. 
KaTHARINE KosMAk. 


A FLOWER REVERIE 


AT TWILIGHT, 
In the rose garden, 
At moon-time, 
Fairies dance and sing; 


Each elfin chime— 


Hear its crystal ring! 


Sweet odors 
Of the blossoms 
That fairly soon must die 
As tinted petals fall, 
Float up into the sky 
And o’er the garden wall. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1920-1923 143 


Shadow-wrapt 
The hidden witches, 
Chanting, bend 
To lock with magic key, 
The flower doors, and end 
My garden reverie! 
BEATRICE WADHAMS, 


DAWN 


Dawn, like a maiden of the mist, 
Rose, clad in raiment softly gray, 
Fringed with flame and gold and blue, 
As the Sun her garments kissed. 


Like glistening diamonds, she flung down 
Dewdrops on every drooping flower; 
And iridescent clear she wore 

The Star of Morning in her crown. 


Past mountains, fir-clad, hazy blue, 
Past gray-white, wind-swept seas she sped; 
Till opened wide the gates of Day 
To let the Maiden Dawn pass through. 
VIRGINIA VoRIS. 


NOCTURNE 


TuHE moon in the heavens 
Was silent and cold; 

The clouds that blew by it, 
Like galleons of old, 

Moved slowly, sedately, 
As onward they rolled. 


144 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


The stars of the evening 
So far, yet close by, 
Stared hard at the city 
In silence, and I 
Mused on the quiet 
That reigns in the sky. 
JAMES FLEXNER. 


THE WIND IS A SHEPHERD 
A Lullaby 


THE wind is a shepherd; 
He drives his clouds 
Across a field of blue. 

The moon puts her face up 
Behind them now 

And sings a song to you. 


So, sleep, my baby, 

And the wind will keep the clouds, 
And we'll look at them to-morrow, 
Me and you, 

As he hurries them through meadows 
And they lay them down to rest 


In a field of blue. 
KATHARINE KoOsMAK,. 


SHADOWS 


FaINT stars, dark skies, and clouds that smoothly sail; 
Far pricks of light; the clutching hands of trees 
Barring the sky; leaves chanting with the breeze; 

A distant hound’s long, moon-struck, cadenced wail; 
The lifting shadows at their ritual dance; 

The noiseless things to whom the night is kind; 

The half-thought dreams that tumble through the mind 
When standing dumbly in a star-struck trance: 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1920-1923 145 


These little things that saturate the night 
Make shadows lovelier than the brightest light. 
JAMES FLEXNER. 


FORSYTHIA 


ON THE edge of the forest a young tree stood, 
Strong and sturdy, with boughs of gray, 

And near it blossomed a cherry tree 

Like a cloud of white on the first of May. 

But though the sun shone fair and bright 
And the song of the birds was gay, 

The young tree longed for the blossoms white 
Instead of his boughs of gray. 


So the fairies took pity on the poor young thing, 
Standing so sad in the midst of spring; 

And they spread over him a golden veil 

Made of starlight, soft and pale; 

And every spring it greets our eyes 

’Round the bend of the road as a glad surprise. 


Forsythia, its name is told, 
And its fame is as bright as its flowers of gold. 
KATHARINE KOSMAK: 


JUST BEFORE LIGHTS 


Ort when the sky is cloudy 
And it’s just pouring, too, 

I listen to my sister play, 
For there’s nothing else to do. 


The room is dark—so dark; 
Growly bears, I think, 

And witches in the shadows hide; 
In gloom they rise and sink. 


146 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


The music chimes with the rain 
(I thought a goblin’s head 
Was popping out again— 
But it’s just a chair instead.) 


Why doesn’t Mother come! 
And we haven’t had our tea; 
I wish that Anne would light the lights— 
I’m sleepy as can be. 
BEATRICE WADHAMS. 


DELPHINE 


THE rosy clouds float over 
The hills of green 
And meadows cool with clover; 
The robins on the terrace sing; 
The snowdrops bloom— 
How sweet the dawn of Spring! 


Over the soft dew grass 

Upon the hill 
There plays a slip of a lass; 

Like the day she is fair as fair, 
And she gracefully spins 

With violets twined in her hair. 


There stands a youth not far, 
Handsome, but shy, 
Shy like a twilight star; 
At last he calls, deep in voice: 
“Delphine! . . . Delphine! . . .” 
She smiles—Spring knows her choice! 
BEATRICE WADHAMS. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1920-1923 


CITY TREES AFTER SNOW 


DESOLATE yesterday; 
Shivering branches violet gray. 


At night the stars sent down— 
In pity of earth’s nakedness— 
A part of their own loveliness; 
Tiny gleaming star-shapes 
Lent each tree a crown. 


Humble bushes, graceful trees, 
For one brief ecstatic day 
Stood in radiant array— 
None so beautiful as these. 


That was just for one brief day; 
Now the city has turned them gray. 


Emma Rounpbs. 


THE GRASPING EYE 


A LicHTHOUsE light that came and went 
Over the snow and ice, 

A path of wet light, laying bare 

The endless white some rude finger 

Had smeared against the low gray sky. 
Timeless the compromise of day and night 
Reeking with gray, chill damp; 

Timeless the compromise of life and death 
In its cold atmosphere. 

The fingers of the tide had drawn | 

With her the ice-cakes in her toils. 


147 


148 CREATIVE YOUTH 


The rocks like fallen giants lay 
With broken fetters on the shore. 
Far out were ships. I heard the dark 
Calling in hoarse and broken tones; 
And searchlights, jewelled with emeralds, paled 
The inky flowing water. 
A furry shroud around me crept 
Like icicles to my touch, 
And I, in fear 
Lest I be chained a monster there 
By the blinking lighthouse eye, 
Fled from the twisted rocks. 
FREDERICA P. PISEK. 


HARBOR SONG 
To Alma Mater 


WHEN comes the time for sailing of a great gray ship, 
(Listen to the calling of the mist-hung sea!) 

You’d think, when happy greetings leap from lip to lip, 
How hard to be a Harbor and to stay at home like me! 


Even now a ship is leaving for a longed-for place, 
(Listen to the waves in their ecstasy!) 
And when it comes back weighted, rich in silks and mace, 
You’d think that to the Harbor would come longing to be 
free! 


But when a ship returns in the starlight chill, 
(Silent is the ocean with its mystery!) 
All losses are forgotten in that one great thrill— 
A bit of my own heart is brought back again to me! » 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1920-1923 


UP FROM UNDERSEA 


BE ow the sea in a submarine 
Such wonders man has rarely seen: 
I see the tide with silver hands 
Ever washing at the sands; 


I see a garden, bright and gay, 


In which the fish and sea-maids play. 
A storm is coming from the West; 


See yonder billow raise its crest! 


WILLIAM SARGENT. 


DEEPEST MYSTERIES 


A cLorious cloud bounds through the sky; 
I follow and peer, far away, 
Where the deepest mysteries lie 
Beneath a mass of gray. 
Gorgeous courts and castles rare; 
Many knights are resting there; 
A prince his princess doth adore 
With music never heard before. 
Night comes; her darkness brings 
A host of butterflies 
With brownies on their wings— 
Then the dreams of night arise! 
Hark! A silver bell doth chime: 
Silence time! 
Silence time! 
The oak tree bows low 
As fairies go, 
Floating onward—onward—~ 
Leaving behind a nightly, silvery glow 


149 


150 CREATIVE YOUTH 


I shoot like an arrow © 
Back to To-day; 
The land of my vision 
Is swept quite away. 
Dreams fly fast! 
The gray cloud has passed 


CURED: A BEDSIDE POEM 


I must go back to school again, 

For the doctor’s passed me by, 

And all I ask is a notebook 

And a pen that won’t go dry 

And a math test and a French comp 

And my pencil breaking ~ 

And a queer frown on the teacher’s face 


And his bald head shaking. 


I must go back to school again, 

For the call of ‘Left Inside”’ 

Is a wild call and clear call 

That may not be denied; 

And all I ask is a bitter day 

And the white flakes flying 

And a broken stick and a cracked ball 
And the umpire crying. 


I must go back to school again 

To the vagrant gypsy life, 

To the barley broth and the old stew 

That asks a clever knife; 

And all I ask is a merry yarn 

And plenty of work and fun; 

And quiet sleep and sweet dreams 
When the homework’s done. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1920-1923 15% 


IN THE HOURS OF DARKNESS 


WHEN the night is cloudy 
And mists hang on the hill, 
There are ghostly footsteps 
And voices, thin and shrill; 
Nothing will your looking 
Show you in the dark 
If the door is opened, 
But harken, harken, hark! 


In the hours of darkness 
Thronging from their camp 

Dark and ghostly goblins 
Flicker by the lamp; 

Listen to their laughter 
As they flicker by the lamp! 


When the rain is falling 

And the night is bleak, 
Something moves the knocker 

And makes the hinges creak; 
Sometimes on the window 

A waving shadow falls; 
Sometimes clammy whispers 


Echo through the halls. 


They lure you with sweet voices 
When you should be in bed; 
Something creaks behind you, 
Something creaks ahead, 
Something gazes at you 
From out behind a tree, 
But if you look around you 
Nothing will you see. 


152 CREATIVE YOUTH 


In the hours of darkness 
Thronging from their camp 
Dark and ghostly goblins 
Flicker by the lamp; 
Listen to their laughter 
As they flicker by the lamp. 
JAMES FLEXNER. 


WIND OF DAWN 


Moon ticut onawall . . . Ivy trailing, clinging, 
Casting velvet shadows in the brilliant radiance 

As the breath of deep midnight 

Stirs its hanging leaves to free themselves; 

Then, with a murmur of soft and careless laughter, 
Presses them gently to the rugged wall. 


Moonlight on a wall . . . Ivy hanging loosely, slackly, 
As the chilly wind of fast approaching dawn 
Seeks to wrest the limp strands 
From stones once sheltering, now indifferent, cold; 
Then with a tinkle of light, unfeeling laughter, 
Swings them hard against the stony wall. 
Wynne FAIRFIELD. 


PHANTOMS 


Nicut falls softly on the bay 

As the Ghost Ship sails o’er the bar; 
A hero rides upon the deck, 

Cold and still as a distant star. 


Long years ago a ship sailed out, 
Slowly it passed the cheering pack; 
Now no one in the town will know 


When the Ghost Ship sails back. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1920-1923 153 


The initial 
temptation 


The drug 
evokes rare 
visions 


Fantasy 
merges into 
horror 


However... 


Over the bay the Ghost Ship sails, 


A pale phantom of long ago, 


And a hero sails her back again— 


But in the town no one will know. 


THE OPIUM EATER 


His days were drab and lacking zest; 
A grinning devil did suggest 

That if he sipped of some narcotic 
Life would then seem more exotic. 


The lifting of a cobalt haze 

Revealed before his anxious gaze 

A swaying jungle bright and weird 
Where gold and scarlet parrots jeered 
While swinging on the living vines, 
Each one a serpent, who entwines 

His amber coils around a limb 

And swings the birds that perch on him. 
He beholding this delusion 

Found himself in wild confusion 


When there before his inner eye 

The parrots flew straight to the sky, 
While the amber reptiles turned, 

With narrow slit-like eyes that burned, 
And slipped like oil on to the ground 
Toward the man whom terror bound; 

And when they reached his shaking frame, 
Breathing smoke and spitting flame. 


His days are never lacking zest, 
For now and then an amber pest 
Will calmly crawl into his lap 
And settle down to take a nap. 


164 CREATIVE YOUTH 


I, too,have But my untainted fancy pure 
dreams... With inspiration can allure 
Rare visions of most anything— 
Yes, gold and scarlet parrots swing!— 
But I can well discriminate, 
And amber snakes eliminate. 
_ Tom PripEaux. 


SKIP-SCOOP-ANELLIE 


ON THE island of Skip-scoop-anellie 

There is made every known kind of jelly; 

Kumquat and pineapple, citron and quince, 

Pomegranate, apricot, all are made since 

Someone discovered that jelly-fish ate 

Fruit from a fish-hook as though it were bait. 

Any particular jelly you wish, 

Lower the fruit to the jellyfied fish, 

After you’ve given it time to digest 

Pull up the jelly-fish. You know the rest. 
THe Lincoutn Imp, 


POOR PUSSY-WILLOWS 


WHEN April 
Blooms a golden day, 
When the sky is speckled white and blue, 
Come pussy-willows, 
Silver-gray, 
They cannot purr, nor can they mew. 


Each pussy-willow 

Wants to cry 
As up the long brown stem they creep: 
They cannot play “I spy,” 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1920-1923 ice 


Or weep— 
Poor pussies, they can only sleep. 
Pixie Rain. 


THE SPOILERS 


Once we lived in Fairyland 

With mysteries on every hand; 
We had a dungeon dark and deep 
Where wicked prisoners we'd keep. 


The loveliest Prince we had there, too, 
With a beautiful Princess for him to woo; 
We put her up in a tower stout— 

And we were the fairies who got her out! 


There was a fairy Queen and King 
With palaces and everything! 

And we had ladies fair, and knights 
Who had the most exciting fights! 


And then they went and spoiled it all! 
They said the palace was the hall! 
They said the dungeon, full of gloom, 
Was just the closet in our room! 
Emma Rovunps. 


THE BALLAD OF A PHILOSOPHER’S PICNIC 
I 


WE LIKE to dream on a clear night— 
“Oh! Oh! My eggs are far from fresh— 
**For we forget when the moon is bright 
‘That flesh is grass, and grass is flesh. 


156 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


IT 


‘For when the sky is bright above— 

“They’ve baked hard stones in this rye bread— 
‘Then you and I will talk of love, 

“But all that lives is really dead, 


III 


**And life is only empty dreams— 
“Who drowned that fly in my amber tea? 
“But we forget when the bright moon gleams 
‘That all that is so, cannot be. 


IV 


‘And when you think that bad things rout— 
“Oh! Oh! My glasses fell in the stream 
*But I will quickly fish them out; 
**T see their bright rims shine and gleam. 


Vv 


“Oh! I’m slipping! Help me quick! 
“Help me!—Blub!—I’m drowning fast! 
**Get that—blub! blub!—ashen stick 


**And save me ere I breathe my last.” 


VI 


**Don’t you remember!” his lady said, 
“You remarked ere you fell off the brink 
That all that lives is really dead?” 
She sat and watched him splash and sink. J. F. 


ON HIS KINDNESS 


WueEn I consider how my cash is spent, 

Ere half the year, with no more checks to come, 
And that my parent won’t increase the sum, 
Acting most grudging, deeming money lent 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1920-1923 157 


Unto his son a debit permanent, 

Then asks a true account of what’s become 
Of my allowance, says I’m frolicsome, 
Repeating that he’s most benevolent. 


I murmur a reply, I do not need 
Either his cash or his benevolence, 
So proudly leave his presence, until late 
He calls me when I least hope to succeed 
And gives me more than’s needed for expense. 
Ah! ‘They are served who do not stipulate. 
PauL M. HeErzou. 


ON THE IMITATIONS OF WORDSWORTH IN 
EARLY CHILDHOOD 


IT GoEs careening through my weary head 

In broken fragments, scattered here and there; 
A word comes suddenly from out the air, 

But just one word, one line, and then I shed 
Great (figurative) drops of bloody red, 
Trying to write the thing. It isn’t fair; 

Some folks dash dozens off without a care; 
When I start writing inspiration’s fled. 


That sonnet keeps me wakeful many a night; 

I’ve tried to grasp it, but I always found, 

Just as I got my pen all poised to write, 

There wasn’t any sign of it around. 

But now I’ve got it down in black and white, 

It can’t fly off again; it’s caught and bound. 
Emma Rounps. 


158 CREATIVE YOUTH 


THE DOOR STANDS OPEN 


THE ever-passing steps went by our door; 
We did not listen then, nor did we look outside; 
But now the door stands open. 


Some hang back, afraid to join the crowd that passes; 
Some gather in the doorway and watch eagerly. 

I am not afraid; 

I am not eager. 


I stand by the window and look at the faces. 
I would know what life is, what the world is, 
Before I go. 

Those who come back are often sad or tired; 
The stories they tell are not always pleasant; 
Yet all who go out are happy; and they hurry, 
Looking ahead at something just beyond. 


There goes one now. She almost runs. 

And there come some who are returning; 

Their faces are lined and ugly, but their eyes are wise. 
Not all of them. I see one coming back 

Whose face is smooth and happy, 

But her eyes are empty—foolish. 

Why? 

I will find out. 


There goes a face like mine that searches for an answer. 
What has she learned? She may tell me. 
But she has passed. 


I see a youth whose eyes are fixed on something far away; 
His is a face to follow and respect. 
I lean out. “Where are you going?” 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1920-1923 159 


The vague, deep eyes turn slightly. 
*“Just over there.” 


“Where?” 


But he is gone. 


Here returns a man whose face must once have been like 
that youth’s; 

His eyes are broken windows, and he babbles without sense; 

What is this world that does such things to men? 


There stands a man who watches those who start out; 
He sees them drop unnoticed things of value 

For which he stoops and searches in the dust; 

He is one who went out and has returned 

With nothing. 


1 leave the window and look about the empty room. 
They all have gone! I cannot warn them. 

"Tis just as well. 

Youth’s saving gift, I think, is that it will not look, 
And cannot see. 


I take a last glance back and gently close the door behind me; 
I catch a friendly hand that’s half outstretched; 
And I am part of the crowd. 

WYNNE FAIRFIELD. 
























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LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE 
1923-1925 


All of the junior high-school verses in this 
section are outcomes of the experiment of 
Miss Caroline B. Zachry in making the pub- 
lication of a magazine the central motivation 
of the English work. She has since presented 
her findings in her Illustrations of English 
Work in the Junior High School, published by 
the Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, 
Columbia University, to which Professor 
William H. Kilpatrick has prefixed acommand- 
ing introduction, 

H. M. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE 
1923-1925 


HE greatest thing in life, my lad,” remarked the Captain 

of the good ship Preach, “is to devour cabbage, pro- 
viding that you dislike it; ram your nose in the mustard jar 
if you detest the odor; and be a surgeon if the sight of blood 
nauseates you. Self-flagellation is a sacred chore.” 

“You are undoubtedly right, sir,” replied the Cabin Boy, 
“but if, preferring water-cress to cabbage, the spice of holly- 
hocks to the efluvium of mustard, and the magenta of wine 
to the crimson of blood, I succumb to these delicacies, what 
then? A nose yellow with pollen, a body literally made of 
cress, and a heart aflame with old Madeira! Although a 
freak, I am a super-specialist on those Delectable Three. 
And where would the world be without the individualist?” 

“Also,” commenced the Captain, unfurling sail for a gust 
of wind, “where would the world be without a common herd? 
We must provide a neutral background to insure sanity and 
balance. Moreover Ne 

“Wait,” interrupted the Boy, “why preserve a back- 
ground? The parts of a tiger’s body are all different, yet. 
they cog in to form a magnificent unit. Why not allow 
each man to express himself and perhaps become a living 
hollyhock? He still remains a congruous and indispensable 
section of the divine Whole!” 

“You are impertinent!” rebuked the Captain. 

So the Boy sat down to a mess of cabbage. 

—Tom Pripeaux: On the Cultivation of Hollyhocks. 
163 


164 CREATIVE YOUTH 


PRELUDE 


You sing a curious song; 
At first, disconnected: 
Still, a strain of music is there— 
I wonder what can follow. 
Etta Fous. 


SPRING VENDERS 


O, BLESSED be the venders in the street 
That flaunt their jaunty splendors in the street: 
Violets and daffodils, 
Whirligigs and windmills, 
Bright balloons, 
Rusty tunes, 
Doughnuts strung on spindles. 


Yet, the doughnut-vender never sells his crullers; 
Just the odor serves to make the children sigh; 
While balloons and toys sell only for their colors— 

The flimsy stuff they’re made of who would buy? 


No one wants the music or a flower. 
Who flings a coin to hear machinery start, 
Or pays for blooms that wither in an hour? 
He only buys the April in his heart. 
Tom PrIDEAUX. 


WILDFLOWER 


Cypress and the wind child 
Flying hither-by; 

Moon-maids, silver touching, 
And a russet sky. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 


Bending ermine birches 

And softly shadowed moon; 
Little redbirds singing 

Faery forest tune; 


Golden water bubbles 
On a pool of blue; 
Floating, floating lily; 
Floating opal, too. 


Wildflower—this 


I breathe from you. 


165 


BEATRICE WADHAMS. 


MOON MADNESS 
Moon Madness! 


I have it as no one ever has. 
I sing wild chants 
And dance mad rhythms 
To the witch light. 
It is my God, 
And it hears my prayers 
And answers them 
When I[ am lonely 
And in need of love, 
The moon comes stealing in, 
And floods me with passionate desire, 
Kisses me and holds me with mysterious silver; 
Takes my soul away 
To the far hilltops, 
And brings it back at morn, 
Leaving only a bit of my heart. 


Some day I shall not come back 


From 
the hilltops! 


166 CREATIVE YOUTH 


More than all else on earth 
I love the Moon; 
Yet were you my son 
And it should be your desire—— 


I would give it to you. 
ZARA MoxHAmM. 


INTIMATIONS 


I wave not been here before 
And I shall not come back; 
Why, then, is the dust trodden 
_ By a faint, familiar track? 
Puitip JORDAN. 


DOWN THE NIGHTS AND DOWN THE DAYS 


Tue clouds that spurred across the sky 
Were puffed with redolent wonder 

And nearby ) 
The hills were golden under. 

He said, “Good-bye.” 


Just the last few rays in a sunset scene 

And the clouds grown gray in the gap between, 
He shook hands, stuttered, and turned away, 
Not quite sure what he ought to say, 

And the higher hills had now turned gray. 


She thought: 
*‘Soon the moon will rise and bring 
Peace more lovely, and wondering, 
More dreamful than the sun has ever brought; 
The moon will drive the shadows far away, 
And make the night more lovely than the day; 
(Hehas gone without a word—was there nothing he could say ?) 
The night shall be more lovely than the day!” 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 167 


She stood still, straight and silent, and the cold 
Black closed around and held her in its hold, 

But soon the sky grew softer, and the night 
Stepped back and left her in the moon’s thin light. 


It burst the massive shadows of the dark 

But formed some trailing tendrils of its own 
To crawl from out beneath the trees and mark 
Which way its slim light shone. 

It roused the sullen stupor of the sky 

And made the night seem twice as high 

As it had seemed before: 

With blanched white face began to change 

All things massy into something strange. 

It took the ponderous mysteries of the black 
And then with wistful hands it gave them back 
More subtle, yet more searching than before. 


Again he came through the moonlight scene 
Sure of his welcome, tall, serene 
And laughing. 


She heard him come and break the charm 
Of wistfulness the moon had gently brought: 
His crunching footsteps burst the lovely calm; 
And yet his advent was the thing she sought! 
She felt his light and power begin 
To clutch her hard and then sink in. 
An impulse snatched her and she fled, 
Leaving his shadow motionless, a blurring gray; 
She fled, and laughed to see the moon still bright above her 
head, 
Making the night more lovely than the day. 
James FLEXNER. 


168 CREATIVE YOUTH 


THEY RATT 


I atways take the path and not the road; 

I know not if it is the pond or if it is the trees 

Or the great drooping willow on the island; 

Yet I must take the path and not the road. 
ALWIN PAPPENHEIMER. 


ABSENCE 


Every night I push my shade up high 
So that the light from just across the street 
Will shine on me. 
It glares blind-white, and hurts my eyes; 
But if I close them— 
I can pretend it is the moon. 


Awhile ago the real moon 
Slid through my window and to my bed; 
It burned even through tight-closed eyes— 
I pulled the shade 
To shut it out. 
VIRGINIA VoRIS. 


THE POOL OF LILITH 
And a curse was laid upon Lilith that she should abide alone in Eden.—A pocrypha. 
SHE searched among the waters, 
Dabbled bare legs in the brooks, 
But they were all so cold 
And ages old. 
Even the lake was not quite right; 
She wanted warmth and light, 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 169 


A pool that would reflect unchanged 
Her glowing guise, 

And make her smile 

Its skies; 

To hold her youth. 

And laugh back lies 

At truth. 


She searched 

And found at last 

Her prize. 

Strange how it cast 
Her face in stone 

And shone 

So hard and brilliant. 
Yet she must catch 
The shining mirror to herself 
And slip, a graceful elf, 
Into the grinning bowl 


Till, coiling here and there, 
Her straying hair 
Mingles with the pebbles 
Fallen from the rim, 
Fashioning huge chains 
To hold her body down, 
While little wrinkling ripples 
Make a ragged sort of gown 
As the luster in her eyes grows dim. 
Puitip JORDAN. 


170 CREATIVE YOUTH 


FIRST SNOW 


PIERROT 

Shows off to the stars 
To-night! 

In his spotted costume 
Spotted white, 

Painting the skies, 

Gilding the moon, 
Balancing pearls 

In a silver spoon— 


Pierrot 
Shows off to the stars 
To-night! 
Paling winter 
In violet light, 
Spilling the spoon— 
And laughing to see 
Pearl upon pearl 
Falling on me! 
BEATRICE WADHAMS. 


OH, SHEPHERD 


Ou, SHEPHERD, free to pipe the days away 
Shepherd, free to watch all nature play, 
We, in cities, see only the leaving of the sunset 
While you, the whole. 
Oh, Shepherd, pipe the day away 
Shepherd, let the whole world play! 
Marcaret Mayo. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 171 


TWILIGHT 


IF you watch in the quietness that comes after sunset, 
When the sky is a candle-lighted bowl, 

Before the earth-lights have asserted themselves, 

And the fretwork of trees borders the gray robe of twilight, 
A hovering drift of clouds slips into the afterglow, 

And time is not, 

And life-ties are forgotten things; 

For it is the calm hand of God which has shaped itself so, 


Poising above us. 
ELEANOR BARNES. 


WEARY OF MYSELF 


My TIME will come, but oh, how long it seems to me 

Before the fruit is ripened on the full-grown tree, 

Before the time when I may be what I am going to be. 
Louise LaIpLaw. 


TO TIMMY 


WHEN we have laughed at life 
And turned to hide our tears, 

We shall see him standing there, 
With laughter in his eyes, 

To greet us 

Who have traversed all the years 
To gain a place beside him 

In some earth-resembling paradise. 


WILDA 
THEY called her ‘‘ Wilda”’ 


Because she was wilful, 
Because she was wild. 


172 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


And she grew up 
The way any young thing grows 
When it is left alone. 
I don’t know why 
She always laughed 
When others saw no joke 
Or yet was silent 
When the rest were gay. 
Surely she was human, 
But we did not know her way. 


Once in a thunderstorm 

We saw her whirling down the path 
And called to her—there was lightning— 
But she did not hear. 
Not one of us quite dared to follow her, 
It was not that we were afraid, 
Only she seemed to know something we did not. 
And ever after that 

She would not look at us, 
But turned away her head 

When we passed by. 


Wilda, I was one of those 
Who did not know, dear. 
I know now, now that you have gone; 
And when I think of you 
I do not see you any more 
A wild thing in the storm, 
But as a sweet young poplar 
Baring its leaves to the wind, 
With a pink cloud behind; 
And | heara mandolin . .. 
Sound of sun-rain 


he f , 
In the far off. BEATRICE WADHAMS. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 173 


CLOCKMAKER’S SONG 


Bits of rubies and bits of steel 

Intricate brotherhood of spring and wheel 
Ticking away on my mantel shelf, 

Clocks that are ornate or pretty or plain 
Ugly, unusual, ugly again, 

Each one is mine, for I made it myself. 


I oil it, and dust it, and love it, and mind it, 
And I never, never forget to wind it. 


Another Clockmaker, quite close by 

Has a mantel shelf reaching from sky to sky. 
He can make a clock in an ecstasy 

Of wild, unbridled artistry 

And set it down among clocks that are plain 
Where it never enters His mind again. 


And it ticks itself still on His mantel shelf, 
For no clock 1s able to wind itself. 


My mantel shelf measures five feet or more 
And His is boundless from shore to shore, 

But I make my clocks just as carefully, 

And each has the same loving care from me— 


And in this, perhaps, I am greater than He. 
KATHARINE KOsMAK. 


OUR MOON} 


THE moon far coming in her misty veil 

Parts wide the heavy curtains of the night, 
Then gently touches grove and hill and dale 
Filling the world with mystic, shimmering light. 
Rikcorintad by permission of the editors from the March, 1925, number of Success. 


174 CREATIVE YOUTH 


And now she spreads upon the sea awhile 
The deep reflection of her cold, strange smile. 


Ah, love! whose heart, so far away from me 
Beats high in rapture on thy wooded hills 
How strangely fair the maiden moon must be 
As she stands thralled above those mountain rills. 
To think— 
This very moon whose rays here frost the sea, 
In radiance bright, e’en now shines down on thee! 
| Louise Burton LaIpiaw. 


PATHS 
To the Class of 1924 


PaTus are always winding; 

One knows not where they go; 
One is always finding 

New nooks where far winds blow. 


From a purple highway, 
Made smoky by fall fires, 

They branch and nose and ramble 
Awakening desires. 

Clear-cut against the burnt grass 
The brown pathway weaves 

Around scarred gray rocks—like centuries— 
Under young and flaming trees. 


Happy paths of spring-time; 
Mud-runny, oozing down, 

Sucking at one’s rubbers, 
Splashing on one’s gown; 

Leading ’round lichened stumps 
Where pale spring-beauties grow, 

Where children watch for fairies 
All breathlessly aglow. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 


Paths are always winding 
About little hills whose tops 
Look bravely off worldward, 
Past fields and homes and shops, 
To a hill a little higher 
Which gives a clearer view 
Of those windy, silent distances 
Where paths lead to. 


THREE POEMS 


FIVE O'CLOCK 
SOFT and gray as a cobweb : 
Dawn hangs over the earth. 
The green young trees stretch their branches 


To hold it there. 


ALMOST MORNING 
The moon brings her opalescent fish 
And lets them play awhile in the black water; 
Then she gathers them up and takes them away 
Lest the day hurt them. 


APOLLO 


All the world lay asleep 
When softly you came, 
Tiptoed, so as to waken 
Only me. 


Through the mist came your golden signal, 
I knew it was for me 

And I came out into 

The morn with you. 


We played among the green trees 
Aad scattered all the dewy tears of night. 


175 


176 CREATIVE YOUTH 


How short seemed our time alone! 
Before I could detain you 
You strode to wake them all; 
You flamed and flung your fires through the skies; 
The world claimed you; 
You were no longer mine. ; 
DoroTHy RAND. 


YOUTH’S EYES 


Warm and happy, starlit, love filled, 
And more than all, 
Confident 
God— 
Keep them always so! 
ZARA MoxHAM. 


YOU STAND ON A MOUNTAIN 


You stand on a mountain. 
Behind you the sun rises earlier each morning 
Because it cannot wait to worship you. 


You are outlined against the brightest light that men know 
And you shine brighter still. 

The glory that men need to live 

Can only lightly touch your golden hair, 

Bring clearer into view 

The straight, strong, supple grace 

The tiger’s quickness, and the gentleness 

Of a yearling buck in your limbs. 


Humbly, adoringly, the sun passes over your glorious head 
And when at last she must leave you for the night to love 
She sends her loveliest light to where you stand; 

And the rays of red gold 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 177 


Deepen the steadfast purpose in your eyes 
Warm and strengthen even more 

The quickness and the keenness of your mind 
And make the mystery of your heart 

More unfathomable still. 


And you stand on your mountain and look out, always out 
Over the towns and Cathedral spires 

To where the sea is tearing at the land 

Impatient to kiss your feet; 

When at last it reaches its goal 

You will still be there to welcome it, 

For you are changeless. 


Sometimes you look up toward Heaven, 

It is not very far from you, 

And the inhabitants of the Holy City 

Lean over the wall of pearl and call to you. 
Sometimes you will look to your side 

Where a wild bird will nestle on your shoulder 
Or a doe with her fawns 

Will nibble unafraid at your hand 

And always find friendship and protection there. 


But you never look down Ms 

For I am there, kneeling at the foot of your mountain. 
From my heart springs a never ending flow of clear water 
And I catch it in a crystal bowl nih 
And hold it up to you 

Until your radiance has absorbed it. 


Then I fill the bowl again. 

Day after day, year after year, I have knelt there 
Looking up through the dark pines on the mountain. ’ 
I cannot see you. But the forest is never dark to me 


178 CREATIVE YOUTH 


And the mountain is never unfriendly 
Because I know you are at the top. 
Aeon after aeon I shall kneel there 
Offering to you my never ending flow of living water 
And you will always accept it. 
\ 


Perhaps I shall wonder, sometimes, 

Whether, if my offerings ceased, ie 

Your beauty, your radiance would fade. 

But I know that they will never cease 

And that your beauty is a changeless thing: 

So in an aeon or two I shall wonder no more 

And only hold my bowl more steadily toward you. 


Some day a traveler will pass through the glade where I kneel; 

He will ask for a bowl of my water, 

Which is all any man would ask for, 

And I will smile and shake my head. 

He will beg for a little sip of it, 

For no other water will quench his thirst. 

But no; he must go away with dry tongue, 

For my heart-spring will at last be dry; 

You, who stand on a mountain, have taken it all. 
KATHARINE KOsSMAK. 


IN A RAILWAY STATION 


SHE sat there staring and then she smiled, 
As if remembering something pleasant, 
A friend’s face or the gesture of a child. 
A silver thing glittered in her hand; 
It fascinated her; she tossed it back and forth 
Then laughed and hid it playfully. 
Then again she stared, head down, 
Eyes blank, hand dully opened. 
-. ELEANOR BaRNES. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 179 


GREEN JANUARY 


War, spring-like days that slip in quick succession 
As in real gladness, to be free to leave 

Dead trees, dry gardens, lifeless green-gray lawn, 
Glad to give up the hopeless task at eve 

To give place to another day at dawn. 

And yet the air is trembling with repression; 

Each gentle rainstorm comes and goes away 

And seems to say, “If I could but control 

The manner of my coming to the earth 

I would not come in such a guise as this. 


Great winds would trumpet, heralding my birth, 
And clear my way, and bring me from the West. 
I’d hold your woods and pastures to my breast, 
Dry trees nor long bare hills shall bar my way. 
Each twig, each vine, each tiny blade of grass 
I’ll in my pity clothe with icy sheaves. 


Each naked tree that shivers where I pass 

Shall be consoled for all its long lost leaves. 

Proud birches I will bend, I’ll hold them there 

With ice, and they’ll not laugh, for they'll not dare.” 

So spake the gentle rain of its suppression; 

Again it said, “If I could but control 

The manner of my coming down to you 

I would not come in such a guise as this: 

But greater powers than mine deny me bliss.”’ 

And so it rained, and no one heard but me, 

Who always knew that rainstorms had a soul. 

Who knew it just as sure had [ not seen 

The tracery of raindrops on the screen, 

Mute evidence of hidden artistry, 

And of well-hidden longing, mute confession. 
KATHARINE KosMAK. 


180 CREATIVE YOUTH 


THE EGOTIST IN HIS ORCHARD 
I 


THE moon will rise and you will brood 
Upon her dying solitude, 

With every little wizened star 
Reminding you how small we are. 


II 
Oh! what strange fruit is in my trees 
To call the phosphorescent bees, 
That they should leave their hives to come 


And suck my one prodigious plum? 
Tom PrIDEAUX. 


SOME AND OTHERS AT THE PRIVATE VIEW 


WHAT SOME SAW 
Rovuau square houses; 
Long-hewn beams, piled here and there; 
Rat-trap jaws 
On heavy-jowled foundations; 
Lined ugliness. 


WHAT OTHERS SAID 
“Startling pictures!” 
“‘Imaginative creations!” 
**Inflorescence of the inner mind; 
Unattainable altitudes!” 
“Cubic curves!” 
Puitrp JORDAN. 


QUASSIA WOOD 


Ou, VEGA is a distant star 
Which blooms in firmaments afar. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 181 


And Vega sheds a pearly blue 
(Perhaps that has a meaning too). 


I think from Vega one could spy 
Colors unknown to earthy eye: 


Our mundane nose could never smell 
Of Vega’s spicy hydromel; 


With normal palate we cannot 
Attract ambrosial apricot 


It always seems that far away 
The quassia trees are very few. 
I wonder, is it really true? 
ARTHUR BUuLLowa. 


FRENCH MINUET 


Pink and blue— 

Pearl gown, 
White-wigged 

Lady— 
Stepping—swaying, 

Dancing tunes. 


Cast a star-glance, 
White-wigged lady, 
At milord’s bronze 
Buckled shoe. 
O, make love 
To-night—this once; 
It matters not in 


Pink and blue. 


182 CREATIVE YOUTH 


Figure cut 

In satin stuff, 
Just a pomp of lace, 
Kisses silvered in the night 
Blow upon his grace. 


Drop a curtsey 
Love, my love, 
Curtsey just by chance— 
Watch him bob his powdered cue, 
Bobbing it to you—to you? 
No, but to the dance! 
BEATRICE WaADHAMS. 


THE SUN-SHUNNER 


TRICKLING down from branch to branch 
Like a saffron avalanche, 


Filtering through the sylvan gauze 
As a frozen topaz thaws, 


Lay, in puddles on the moss, 
Golden solar, apple-sauce. 


“Strain the brilliance,’ I beseeched, 
“Or my reason will be bleached!” 
Tom PRIDEAUX. 


FIREWORKS 


SILVER FOUNTAINS 


EXPLOSION in a jewel case! 
Trinkets, gems, 
Diadems, 

Filigree like burning lace. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 183 


Watching all the baubles mount 
Always I 
Wonder why 

They do not tinkle in their fount. 


ROCKETS 


A genie’s arm, and sleeved in gold 
Was thrust across the sky. Behold, 
How from his smoking palm there falls 
A silent chime of colored balls. 
Tom PRIDEAUX. 


DECEMBER 


A LITTLE boy stood on the corner 

And shoveled bits of dirty, soggy snow 
Into the sewer— 

With a jagged piece of tin. 


He was helping spring come. 
SANDERSON VANDERBILT. 


NATURE NOTES 
THE HAPPY HYENA 


Wuy does the gay hyena laugh? 
Is he endeavoring to chaff, 
Or does he want us all to see 
How very genial he can be? 
Or giving us an exhibition 
Of his remarkable dentition? 
THE WILD HOME-PUSSY 
I love little pussy, her coat is so warm, 
But when she grows vocal she loses her charm. 


Her sphere is not the concert stage; 
She should know better at her age. 


184 CREATIVE YOUTH 


Our very nicest cats don’t roam; 
A pussy’s place is in the home 
Purring, and being there to pat. 
She should confine herself to that, 
Never competing for the honors 
Bestowed on human prima donnas. 


THE WISE WOOD-PUSSY 


The pensive polecat is not shy; _ 
Perhaps that is the reason why 
He has no popularity. 


I wonder, does he e’er observe 
That people, when they meet him, swerve 
In a wide, rudely pointed curve. 


It does not seem to cause him woe; 
He simply smiles, and in a glow 
Of victory, retires slow. ~ 
Emma Rounps. 


TO JULIA, CAUTIONING HER AGAINST INFEC- 
TIOUS DISEASES 


WHEN as with measles Julia goes 
She’s colored like a red, red rose, 
Even unto her dainty nose. 
Next, when she’s taken with the mumps 
Her cheeks are but unsightly lumps— 
Then how my admiration slumps! 
EmMA Rounps. 


THE CIRGUS 


THE PARADE 


HERE it comes with all its clamor, 
All its grand and gaudy glamour, 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 185 


Tell me when such spangled wonder was displayed?! 
All of Solomon’s possessions 
And the emperor’s processions 

Never rivaled half the pomp of this parade. 


See the harem maids Circassian 
Garbed in Oriental fashion 
From the earrings to the henna on their feet, 
In the gilded howdahs swaying 
And majestically surveying 
All the awed and gaping people in the street. 


See the herds of jeweled dragons 
Coiling over crimson wagons, 
Watch the unicorns a-whirling on the wheels! 
And the fat and portly cherubs 
Sailing under scarlet scarabs, 
Who are fleeing for their lives from copper eels. 


THE SIDE-SHOW 


Tremendous! Stupendous! 
Zaboo, the giant! 
Joz, the magician! 
Lynn, death-defiant! | 
Ten cents admission! 


THE MENAGERIE 


Wistful lions’ eyes behind bright cages 
Lit with tolerance like martyred sages. 
Hippopotamuses dream of sprawling 
Where a river thick with ooze is crawling. 
Slim giraffes display their mottled graces, 
Longing for a desert’s cool oasis. 
Monkeys screech in panic as if mocking 
Chewing-gum posterity for gawking. 


186 CREATIVE YOUTH 


THE BIG SHOW 


Troupes of boisterous strutting clowns 
With yellow cheeks and painted grins, 
A far cry from the love-sick frowns 
Of sad pierrots and harlequins. 


Careening through the polished paraphernalia 
Like birds among the jungles of a dream, 
The acrobats in glittering regalia 
Dazzle life with their own sequin’s gleam. 


Then bowing when their lauded act is ended, 
And tossing kisses, jaunty and so glib, 
I wonder if they really comprehended 
They’ve tickled Death along his bony rib? 
| Tom PRIDEAUX. 


THE MORON TURNS 
OR 


Tue DancER oF FoLLowINGc THE PHILOsopHER WuHo Sat, 
“KNow THYSELF.” 


I 


At Intelligence Tests 

I am not at my best, 

They are not my idea of a spree; 

They possess no attractions for me. 
There is no fascination 
Or fervid elation 
In slowly and patient- 

Ly filling the blanks 

That confront me in ranks. 
There are other, better ways, 
Of passing idle days 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 187 


Than eternally perusing 
A hazily confusioning 
Ultimately disillusioning 
Test. 
And the rest, 
The things the tests show, 
I’d much rather not know. 


I] 


It dwelt among untrodden ways, 
Obscure, unknown to fame, 
An I. Q. nobody could raise 
But nobody could blame. 
It dwelt apart, and few could know 
’*Twas low as low could be; 
Until I took a test—then, oh! 
The difference to me! 
Euma Rounps. 


TROPICS 
I 


SreE the cockatoos’ vermilion, 

Watch the monkey’s mad cotillion, 
Swaying in the coconut trees. 

Listen to their giddy gibber 
Have you known a jabber glibber 
Have you heard birds babble as these? 


An old baboon all day absorbs 

Himself in efforts vain to make 

His eyelids stretch, although they ache, 
To cover up protruding orbs, 


188 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


II 
Hear the cannibal hum, 
And dance, 
With lance, 
And beat his drum. 


On his head a waving cluster 

Like a giant feather duster 

Shades the oiled and umber luster 
Of his body from the sun. 

As he wails of heathen cults, his 

Throbbing diaphragm convulses 

And the soul within him pulses 
As the magic rite is done. 


From a flame hibiscus plant 
Crouching women watch him rant. 
Eyes of wonder overawed 

By the jungle’s gloom and gaud, 
By the sea’s eternal din, 

By a shark-toothed idol’s grin. 

By the fear that death may be 

On that idol’s steaming knee. 


III 

The sun slips down; 
Listless palm fronds flap; 

The foam-fringed, . 

Sun-singed, 

Flame-tinged 
Waves lap, lap. +’ 

~~ Tom Pripeavux. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 


MORAL TALES 


MARY AND BETTY 
Mary, at the soda fountain, 
Ate a promising young mountain 
Of candy, sodas, and ice cream— 
Made the drug-store man just beam— 
Staggered home an awful mess, 
With chocolate on her nice new dress. 
Mother, cross, gave darling daughter 
For supper, butter, bread, and water. 


Betty, who lived right next door, 
Was a virtuous little bore 

Who disdained a druggist’s store. 

On the night of Mary’s spree 

Her mamma gave her for her tea 
What she always gave her daughter— 
Healthful butter, bread, and water. 


There’s a moral somewhere here— 
Find it for yourself, my dear. 


MABEL 
Mabel is so good and sweet; 
Keeps everything so nice and neat; 
Does exactly what she should— 
Mabel’s very, very good. 
Sometimes a little idea strikes her— 
Isn’t it queer that no one likes her? 


JOHNNY 
Johnny used to find content 
In standing always rather bent, 
Like an inverted letter J. 
His angry relatives would say, 


189 


190 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


“Stand up! don’t slouch! You've got a spine, 
Stand like a lamp-post, not a vine!”’ 
One day they heard an awful crack— 
He’d stood up straight—it broke his back! 
Emma Rounpbs. 


ON MY LADY’S FINGERNAIL 


Ou, MOST exquisite, many-tinted oval 
Tipping the digit of my fair Hortense, 
When once before thee, I can only grovel, 
Indifference is but obvious pretence. 

A tiny crescent forms a milky curve 

Like the plump bosom of a cooing dove, 
Setting a-tingle each and every nerve 
Awaking dormant fires of passionate love. 


Ten glistening tear-drops from my fingers drip 
Teetering precariously from thy quivering brinks, 
While love-lorn I can only stand and sip 
In trembling haste ten eager, thirsty drinks. 
But, sweetest Lady, though I would not carp, 
I find thy nails, forsooth, a trifle sharp. 

Hope SPINGARN. 


URBAN TRANSPORTATION SONGS 


THE SUBWAY 


CHILDREN, see this pretty thing, 
Every morning it will bring 

Loads of people to the city. 

Isn’t it an awful pity . 

That they have to stand and swing 
By a silly little string 

Precariously balancing? 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 


If mayhap they get a seat 
Someone stands upon their feet; 
If they keep their elevation 

By employing concentration, 

In their fervid exultation 

They are sure to pass their station! 


THE BALLAD OF THE MERRY FERRY 
Sing hey and sing ho and sing down-a-down-derry, 
Oh, what is so merry 
As missing the ferry! 


A nice wintry morning 

So jolly and freezing 

A dear little cold keeps you coughing and sneezing 
And everyone mirthful and happy and gay 

As we all watch the ferry go puffing away. 


Sing hey and sing ho and sing down-a-down-derry, 
Oh, what is so merry 
As missing the ferry! 


191 


Emma Rounps, 


HE DID! 


HE WALKED and walked and walked 
And then? He walked some more 
Till he arrived at length 
At the country store. 


He bought and bought and bought, 
And then? He bought some more 

And when he’d finished buying 
There was naught in the store. 


192 CREATIVE YOUTH 
He walked and walked and walked, 


And then? He walked some more 
Until he came at length 
To his own front door. 


He pulled and pulled and pulled, 
And then? He pulled some more 
Until he pulled the hinges 
Off his own front door. 


He walked and walked and walked, 
And then? He walked some more 
Until he landed breathless 
~ On his bedroom floor. 
| PAULINE BAERWALD. 


MOON 


WITHERED wanton of the night, 
Draw the clouds about your face; 
Harsher stuff is all for youth, 
Age sedately sanctions lace. 
Tom PRIDEAUX. 


OUT THERE 


Tue other night a fellow left, and 
He was a real friend of mine 
And sometimes at night, when 
I’m thinking about things, 
I wonder where he’s gone, 
And if he’s coming back, 
And what it’s like out there. 
STEPHEN DUGGAN. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 193 


THE BEAUTY OF HER 


Tue beauty of her lies not in her smile 

But in the petulant droop of her lips; 

Not in the gleam of her smooth curls, 

But in that one vagrant lock which has escaped. 


Not in her silken gown sh mmering in the light, 

But in the snubbed toe of her little slipper; 

Not in the gentle love shining from her eyes, 

But in the sly glance of mischief which I caught unawares. 
ALIcE HABBERTON. 


TANG 


HE LIKED peaches— 
They were soft and sweet. 


A green persimmon 
Was her delight: 
It left her mouth all puckered. 
ZorA Heap. 


SEASONAL IMPRESSIONS 


I HAVE experienced 

The languorous haze 

Of a summer eve, 

And the crackling cold 

Of a winter morn; 

And I have felt 

The tired mist 

Of an autumn noon; 

And the sparkling wine 

Of a youthful spring. 
Lincotn REIs. 


194 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


KIN 


I swiTcHED the light off; 
And as I turned 

To shield myself 

From the keen night air 
I heard the swishing 

Of the trees 

Trying on their new 


Spring dresses. yy eee 


THE NORTH WIND 


A Shivering Song 


I 


Tue North Wind shakes the shivering moon 
And rattles the windows with a banging tune 
Hurling his message at the earth 

And hugging the trees with a shout of mirth. 


IT 


Howling his challenge to the night 

With all his blustering windy might 

The North Wind clings to his hard-won prize 

With a mist-wreath’d brow and starlit eyes. 
Linco_n REIs. 


THE LAND OF THINGS FORGOTTEN 


A PALE, slender shot of silver from the moon 

Came through my window last night before dawn, 
And struck the dark oval mirror with white. 

It shone back with an empty gleam, 

Making a pale, pale-white gold daffodil 

Standing in a copper vase on a dark pclished table, 
Paler and more graceful still. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL) VERSE, 1923-1925 195 


As the stars that shone silently in the dark failed, 
So did the weird, uncanny black night— 
And the dead, gray, quiet dawn crept in. 


The moonbeam and the daffodil faded. 
The silent, ghostly shadows of black and gray disappeared, 
And the host of dreams and imaginings 
Which people my room at night 
Went to the land of things forgotten, where some day 
I shall find them; 
And the moon-beam and the daffodil, 
When I go there too. 
ANNE PAPPENHEIMER. 


THES CALL OF THE: ALR 


A MAN who stands by his cottage door, 
Gazing over the ocean wild and free, 


A wish to discover lures within, 
This is the call of the sea! 


A man who sees beyond the hills, 
Who sees a waste of stretching sand, 
Then sees the fruits of Nature there, 
This is the call of the land! 


A man who sleeps beneath the stars, 
And into the depth of space can stare, 
A man who sees beyond the world, 
This is the call of the air! 
GHOLSON KITTREDGE. 


196 CREATIVE YOUTH 


TIRED WATER 


T HEAR it 
Playing on the roof, 
In April; 
With a soft, sweet sound. 


I hear it, 
Jumping down the rocks 


Like silver 
With a long glad bound. 


I hear it, 
The swelling tossing ocean 
In March, 


Showing its fangs with a roar. 


Rearing, 

In a high blue ridge, 
White capped, 

And beating on the shore. 


The brook 

So wise and so silly 

So musical 

Like cold crystal—at home. 


Tired water, 
Enslaved by man to work 
In mills, 
Struggling for freedom, cannot roam. 
ANNE PAPPENHEIMER. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 197 


TINSEL 


WHERE 1s l[insel? 


Out in the rain 
Singing a ditty 
And crying 


Look in the puddles 
The lights that are there 
Popp yan ett ae OPDY, 
Lilac and gold, 
So many faéries 
Wingless and cold. 
So many faéries 
Shut out of the skies, 
Because they grew old, 
And foolishly wise : 
BEATRICE WADHAMS. 


CAVALIER’S DITTY 


WHEN my father was young, he roamed over the earth, 
With a heart like a feather, a soul full of mirth, 
And he made him a vow on the night of my birth, 

To make me a soldier of fortune. 


A soldier of fortune was I, was I, 

As carefree as ever a lark in the sky, 

Tho older and wiser in scorn passed me by, 
For I was a soldier of fortune. 


I roamed thru each village and town, every town, 

But my purse remained empty—I won no renown, 

And the fates laughed in triumph to see me cast down, 
For I was a soldier of fortune. 


198 CREATIVE YOUTH 


When I saw that my efforts would nothing avail, 

I wondered that ever I’d follow the trail 

And squandered the days of my youth—but to fail, 
For I was a soldier of fortune. 


But a richer reward than mere gold did I earn, 
And a maid taught me that which I yet had to learn, 
So that now I’ve a haven to which [ can turn, 
For I’m no more a soldier of fortune. 
ALINE WECHSLER. 


SEA-GODS 


GIANTS 
Powertuly une wet 
Slapping the sandy beach 


When do you sleep? 
: WILMA ROELOFSMA. 


AKIB, KING OF EGYPT'S SON 


AxiB, king of Egypt’s son 

Lay by the river Do Dum Dun, 
Lay on the gray-green sands 

Of Egypt land, 


On Egypt’s gray-green sand. 


Lay beneath the oily palm, 

Humming a song to the Ukeadahm 

Till he fell asleep, in the middle of June, 
Singing away to the crocodile’s tune, 

To the tune of the ugly crocodile, 

As it beat its tail in the river Nile; 
Damyip hein eet eee ae CUNY 
On the back of a hollow bamboo drum. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 199 


As he lay asleep beneath the palm, 

He dreamt he saw the Ukeadahm 

Come step by step o’er the gray-green sand, 
O’er the gray-green sand of Egypt land, 
With stealthy steps, with cautious looks, 
Washing his face in the cool of the brooks, 
In the brooks 

That wound about through sheltered nooks. 


Through the sheltered nooks of Egypt land 

That haunt the fields of gray-green sand 

Came the Ukeadahm with his heavy trod 
Crushing the soil and mashing the sod 

Spoiling the sands of Egypt land, 

As he sifted the grains through his hoof-like hand, 
Sifting the grains 

To the wind that blew over Egypt land. 


Akib dreamt that the moon broke out 

In the sky above him, and tossed about 

Like a ship on the sea, in the trough of a storm, 
Fighting the waves as the night went on; 

And he saw the moon shiver at the crocodile 

As it thumped its tail in the river Nile, 
Pinan me CU er reese CUIN 

On the back of a hollow bamboo drum. 


On and on came the Ukeadahm, 

Till he looked and saw the oily palm 
And Akib lying on the gray-green sand, 
The gray-green sands of Egypt land, 
And heard the ugly crocodile 

As it beat its tail in the river Nile, 
BOTs Me tUieey e mr un CLT 


On the back of a hollow bamboo drum. 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


And the dew came down on the oily palm 
And wet the gruesome Ukeadahm 

And formed a mist of muggy white, 

That glistened through the pale moonlight, 
And fell in drops on the gray-green sand, 
And moistened 

Drop by drop, Egypt’s gray-green sand. 


And the mist enshrouded the Ukeadahm 
Enshrouded the Nile and the oily palm, 
Covered Egypt’s gray-green sand, 

The gray-green sands of Egypt land, 
Enveloped the river Do Dum Dun, 

And Akib, king of Egypt’s son, 

And the crocodile 

As he beat with his tail in the river Nile. 


And Akib woke beneath the palm, 
Woke from his dream of the Ukeadahm, 
Covered with dew from the mist all around, 
As he lay on the gray-green sandy ground, 
Woke to the tune of the crocodile 
As he beat with his tail in the river Nile, 
CL Pee LIT ea a ERC TTT 
On the back of a hollow bamboo drum. 
SAMUEL Lyncu. 


RAIN-RIDING 


DRENCHED, soaked, sopped 

I sat on top of a bus; 

No one else had climbed the stairs. 

The rain was splashing down; 

I huddled under a half broken umbrella 

Two dull lights showed dimly through the haze 


From a ship on the river. 
Mary RuMELy. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 201 


SONG 


ManpariNn, Mandarin 
Nod your head! 

My heart is a moonstone 
Cold and dead, 

Mandarin 


Nod! 


One love of mine 
They killed by scorn; 
Another love 
Died of itself 
But the third 
Was the first 
That taught me to hate 
And that was the love 
That came too late 


Mandarin! Mandarin! 
Say it was fate 

Mandarin 

Nod. 


BEATRICE WADHAMS., 


O SAILORS! 


Here upon the rocks we lie, 
And gaze in scorn up to the sun, 
For, self-sufhcient, fear we none; 
And idly watch the ships pass by. 


Ah, idly? Who that word shall say 
Concerning us! Have not the waves 
Taken unto themselves the graves 

We made, while seeming but to play? 


202 CREATIVE YOUTH 


Ye sailors! Hither, one and all. 
Come, join our gambols here the while, 
For we will time and thoughts beguile. 
Can one of you resist our call? 


The reefs o’er yon are but a prank 
Some wanton Fate has played your eyes; 
Come, enter into Paradise! 

Who fears to touch upon this bank? 


O sailors! Hear our voices low, 
Would you not come and closer be 
That you may all this beauty see, 
To rest with us, and never go? 
ALINE WECHSLER. 


LULLABY 


Let the shooting stars 
Play tag 

Chase the wind—or follow 
The moon; 

Let the lone ships toss 
Like leaves, 

To the ocean’s frantic tune. 


Through the tireless night 
You sleep 
Hushed by the silent sky 
To the silver slumber 
Of a fairy’s lullaby. 
PriscILLA WADHAMS. 


THE BLACKFEET OF MONTANA 


I met the chiefs in the morning, (and oh, but I am old!) 
Where roaring down the canyon the summer west wind 


rolled. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 203 


I heard them lift the war-whoop that quelled the gray-wolf’s 
song, 
The Blackfeet of Montana—two thousand voices strong! 


The cry of warring nations along Montana’s plain, 

The whoop of scalping squadrons that stripped the bleeding 
slain, 

The chant of frenzied dances that churned the heart to flame— 

The Blackfeet of Montana—before the pale-face came ! 


I met the braves in the morning (I’ll meet them ne’er again); 

They came and went in parties that dotted all the plain. 

And as the pioneers came west, their squatter homes to make, 

We slew the scattered vanguard, and burned them at the 
stake! 


The plains of old Montana—the badland buttes so tall, 

The great-browed red-eyed bison, the flint-clawed pumas call, 

The game-trails of our hunting grounds, all shining smooth and 
worn ! 

The plains of old Montana—the home where we were born! 


The Blackfeet met in the morning, a broken, scattered band, 

The white men shoot us down like dogs, to rob us of our land. 

They drive us from our homeland, broken and cowed and 
tame; 

But we recall Montana before the pale-face came! 


Wheel out, wheel out to the eastward; oh, prairie falcon, go! 

And tell the eastern nations the story of our woe; 

Ere, empty as the clam-shell the river flings ashore, 

The plains of old Montana shall know their sons no more. 
WILLIAM SARGENT. 


204 CREATIVE YOUTH 


SOME DAY, MAYBE 


BENEATH the magic Cherry Tree, 
Beside the Stone of Mystery 
Where fairies play, 


A sort of mist is over there, 
But birds will call and lead you where 
The fairies play. 


Some day maybe you will see 
The Tree and Stone of Mystery 
Where fairies play. 
PriscILLA WADHAMS. 


OH, FISHMAN, SWEET FISHMAN 


“Ou, FisHMAN, sweet Fishman, where do you get your fish? 

' For you know the sea’s a thousand miles away.” 

“When it rains,” he said, ‘“‘in torrents I catch them in a dish, 
Or a teaspoon, or a jar-top, or a tray. 


“Then I put them in the bathtub, which they always do en- 
joy 
As it’s purple trimmed with violet all around, 
And I feed them sour fishworms, and a certain sweet alloy 
Procured by placing mouse-traps underground. 


“The sunfish get excited and squirm between the rails, 
But I feed the infant oysters with a spoon, 
And if the trout are lonesome, and the baby catfish wails, 


I play with them until it’s half-past noon.”’ 
Joun Croty. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 205 


NEW YEARS 


LIKE a new-burst bud 
Twelve petals all 
Open one by one, 
Fade, and then fall; 
So, very like buds 
Yet unfurled, 
Lie the future years 
Hiddenly curled. 
SUSAN KRONTHAL. 


MORNING 


Twics crackle frostily in the cold blue light of morning; 
Hazy smoke from kitchen fires while light is dawning; 
Mountain peaks are misty in the yellow morning sun, 
And many a dog is barking that the day’s work is begun. 
NATHALIE SWAN. 


BEVEOUS IIR S 


A STATELY figure pacing ever 
To and fro, to and fro, 
His tawny well-brushed coat 
Of mellow walnut stain, 
Darkened here and there, 
Was beautiful; 

His majestic air was 
Startling 

But for his piteous eyes 
Piercing his one line of vision, 

The walls of his captivity. 

Mary SPURRIER. 


206 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


THE BARN-SWALLOW 


In THE Alleghany mountains 
When the apple orchards bloom 

I know of eaves in a big red barn 
Where I’ll find nesting room 


I’m coming back! I’m coming back! 
My wings are on the wind; 
I’m coming back with the spring-time 


To the hills I’ve left behind 


I’m coming back! I’m coming back 
To the hills that I know best, 

Where the mountains sleep, and the winds walk 
And where my wings can rest 


In the Alleghany mountains 
When the apple orchards bloom 
I know of eaves in a big red barn 
Where I’ll find nesting room. 
WILLIAM SARGENT. 


BIZARRE 


Tuts is the season of the frost, 

Of the silver and the white 

That come in the night, 

Of the mornings clear and cold 

When the sun pours down white gold, 
Lifting the cobweb veil from off the green. 


This is the season of bizarre, 
Of the red and the gold, 


Color-glories untold, 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 207 


When the hills are wearing blankets, 

Where the orange has no limits 

And the sky is full of rainbows chopped up small. 
ANNE PAPPENHEIMER. 


OUR LADY OF THE SHIPWRECKED 


(4 statue, Notre Dame des Naufragés, on an exposed point of the 
Breton coast.) 


WIND-LASHED and tempest-worn, above the sea 
She stands, in mourning robes of sullen skies, 
And on her back, a people’s burden lies, 

And in her ears, there rings a people’s plea: 


“Bring back our fathers from the gloating waves! 
Oh take our sailor kinsmen by the hand 
And lead them through the fog and storm to land! 
Great Mother, raise our people from their graves!” 


The wind calls to the sea, 
And the sea 
Sweeps her robes about her dead 
In melody. 
ELEANOR FLEXNER. 


PEOPLE 


TuHE length of shooting stars 
They live, and wonder why; 
Then rearrange their earthly beds 
And settle down to die. 
Puitie JORDAN. 


208 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


WE MEET AGAIN 


Wrru half a laugh of hearty zest 
I strip me of my coat and vest. 


Then, heeding not the frigid air, 
I fling away my underwear, 


So, having nothing else to doff, 
I rip my epidermis off. 


More secrets to acquaint you with, 
I pare my bones to strips of pith 


And when the expose is done 
I hang, a cobweb skeleton. 


While there you sit, aloof, remote, 
And will not shed your overcoat. 
Tom PRIDEAUX. 


ANCHORITE © 


TIME is elusive; ° 

I do not waste it 
toiling to aid and serve 
a thankless universe. 


But, as a heedless Nero, 
oblivious to all, 
I play my squeaky fiddle in a 
burning world. 
SANDERSON VANDERBILT. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 209 


ON CERTAIN POETS 


AMY LOWELL 


WHEN I bring you a peony, 

Torn, and trampled on by the rain, 
You shake off the soil and put it 
In a crystal vase, 

Because you know— 

Don’t you? 


When I bring you a poem 

Written with my heart’s blood, 

A poem people cannot understand 

Because it was not written for them—or by them, 
You lay it quietly on the flames 

And let it fly away in gray smoke 

Because you understand— 

Don’t you? 


When I bring you my soul, 
Disregarded, forgotten 

By all but me—and perhaps you— 
You tell me that in these days 

A soul is unnecessary—useless— 
And you smile, 

Because you are—you, 

Aren’t you? 


JOHN MASEFIELD 
Ler not the forests shorten your sight 
Like an arrow stopped by a tree; 
Let not the hills cut off with their height 
The place where your gaze should be; 
But follow the sea gull’s scopeless flight 


210 CREATIVE YOUTH 


And the outward stretch of the sea. 
Unreachable storm clouds that come at night, 
The waves, outbound by the new moon’s light, 
And the water gardens, sunless yet bright, 
Are the hills and the trees of the sea. 


CARL SANDBURG 


LisTEN to me. You are all making a mistake; 

You don’t know beauty when you see it. 

There is beauty in the tangle of gas pipes under a city street; 

The empty lots at the city’s edge are beautiful; 

And there is really poetry in the heap of tin cans beside a 
suburban brook. 


Listen tome. You whotry to let the glory of the sun at mid- 
day 

Blind your eyes to these things; 

You fool yourselves into thinking that the pale dawn hides 
them; 

You weep because there is a pumpkin vine growing in the 
dump heap. 

You don’t understand. 

I don’t expect you to. 

Beauty is a custom like everything else. 


SARA TEASDALE 


Aut that is bitter and all that is sweet, 
Lord, you have given me to taste; 
All of your problems I tried to meet; 
Now have your bounteous gifts gone to waste? 


Joy have I felt, and love and hate, 
Pain and envy and ecstasy, 

Failure, success, and the hand of fate, 
All have you caused to be laid on me. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 211 


Now I have mixed them and have placed 
All my life at your patient feet; 

Lord, you have given me all to taste; 
Which is bitter and which is sweet? 


WILLIAM ROSE BENET 


Our mission in this world consists of three 
Great underlying tasks: one is to fight 

To keep the world from crushing in its flight 
The kind of person that you want to be. 


The second task seems small—infinitely: 

To fill the moment when we are in sight 
With light—with all that we can give of light 
To make our children see—and want to see. 


The third task is, down in your heart to know— 
Still being sure you are not really wise— 

That all the suns and stars that flame and glow, 
Those swooping, whirling things, are Someone’s eyes 
That watch you, with the power to overthrow 

Your star, and send you crashing through the skies. 


EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY 


THE world came by and tugged at my wrist; 

I laughed, and it ran away with me 

Over a wide sea of jade and of amethyst, 

Through deep cool forests, soft-packed with the summer mist. 
Joyously, all last week, I let it play with me. 


This week has brought me much work to complete; 

Pen, broom, and book shall spend all of each day with me; 

Many neglected tasks clutch at my feet. 

When the world comes to me, calling so sweet, 

Will I resist it?—oh, human deceit— 

Joyously, all this week, [ll let it play with me! 
_KaTHaRINE KosMak. 


212 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


COQUETTE 


Tuts dulled moth startles you? 

It will confound you more 
When to-morrow I 
Return to butterfly. 
Pll turn my fickle head 
As I take leave 
And watch you brush 

My wings’ dust-powder 
From your sleeve. 

ZoRA Heap. 


SOPHOMORE 


LEAVE me 

For I am busy 

I am tired of doing 
Things in firm staid ways 
Away!— 
I must absorb myself in doing 

Nothing. 

ZoRA HEap. 


AT KENILWORTH 


“THs stately edifice of storied stone— 
Ancient adornments of high heraldry; 

My own best council, modest—as you see; 
All that I have and am shall be thine own. 
My very heart lies open at thy throne, 
And all my highest hope shall ever be 

To kneel in endless fealty to thee— 

Great mistress, and to worship thee alone.” 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 213 


So spoke false Leicester to the wary queen 

Whose upraised hand might chasten or endow 

With equal power. When did that subtle smile 

Ever give hope to him who would beguile? 

Yet for one moment flushed her woman’s brow; 

In that shrewd eye, an unshed tear was seen. 
LoutsE LAIDLAw. 


THOSE THINGS THAT ONCE HAVE BROUGHT 
US HAPPINESS 


Tuose things that once have brought us happiness 
We wish to keep, to give us joy once more; 
The ecstasy which we have felt before 

We would bring back, our future hours to bless. 


And so we build a shrine and worship there, 
Or learn by rote the thoughts we wish to feel; 
In some remembrancer we try to seal 

The essence that once made our fancies fair. 


But joy is uncontrolled as is a stream 
That sparkles, scintillating in its haste, 
Yet ceases when no longer flow the springs; 
Likewise the beauty of a tender dream 
Will fade away, unless we newly taste 
The holy, sweet elation that love brings. 
Artuur E. BeEstor, JR. 


THE GALLEY-PROOF OF THE POETIC PUDDING 


Mucu have I traveled in the realms of wit, 

Full many goodly jests and verses read; 
Through pages crammed with humor have I sped 
And smiled in passing at some subtle hit. 


214 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


Oft, reading stuff that brighter minds had writ 
A vague ambition in my soul was bred, 

I, even I, could, so I vainly said, 

Be funnier than that—till I tried it. 


Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
When on a picnic he sees coming rain; 
Or like a student bard, whose anguished eyes 
Stare at the precious products of his brain, 
Censored, blue-peneiled, scoffed at by the wise, 
Upon a heap of literary slain. 

EMMA Rounps. 


PLANE GEOMETRY 


"Twas Euclid, and the theorem pi 
Did plane and solid in the text, 
All parallel were the radii, 
And the ang-gulls convex’d. 


“Beware the Wenworth-Smith, my son, 
And the Loci that vacillate; 


Beware the Axiom, and shun 
The faithless Postulate.”’ 


He took his Waterman in hand; 

Long time the proper proof he sought; 
Then rested he by the XYZ 

And sat awhile in thought. 


And as in inverse thought he sat 
A brilliant proof, in lines of flame, 
All neat and trim, it came to him. 
Tangenting as it came. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 215 
“AB, CD,” reflected he— 


The Waterman went snicker-snack— 
He Q.E.D.-ed, and, proud indeed, 
He trapezoided back. 


‘And hast thou proved the 29th? 
Come to my arms, my radius boy! 

O good for you! O one point two!” 
He rhombussed in his joy. 


’Twas Euclid, and the theorim pi 
Did plane and solid in the text; 
All parallel were the radii 
And the ang-gulls convex’d. 
Emma Rovwunps. 


HONORS 


Axas, I looked on lands too far, 
Reached out beyond my place, 
And now I sing the treble bar 
While others play the bass. 
Puitip JORDAN. 


WALT WHITMAN 
| I 


Watt WHITMAN, you enigma, 
You egotist, who flaunt yourself 
Naked to the world, 

You many-sided one. 

You preacher of beauty 

In halting lines 

That sweep one before their flood 
And bore one to death. 


216 CREATIVE YOUTH 


Walt Whitman, you pain me, 
I am tortured when I read you; 
But I read you. 


You preach physical strength 

The physical roughness and strength of 
Freeborn man. 

You, who nursed the wounded more gently 
Than the gentlest woman, 

Walt Whitman, it is only you who can do that. 


You cannot please me 
Like some minor poet 
Of candied prettiness, 
Who is to you 
Like some sweet, shrubbed hill 
To some gigantic mountain. 
Walt Whitman, you bore me, I am sick of you; 
I hate your conceits and affectations— 
And your nakedness. 
You tire me to death; 
But I will come back to you. 
Lincotn REIs. 


JAZZ, TINTER OF SOULS 


INVOCATION 


Jazz, universally scoffed at, deplored by the older genera- 
tion, horrifying the purists, we float through space, swung 
upward by your billows, swinging with your undulations, 
made light by the spell of your syncopation. 

Jazz, how many mechanical hearts have you pulsed with 
the vivid throb of life, how many feet have you lifted, how 
many souls have you momentarily raised from their drabness 
with the spell of your syncopation? 

Jazz, you have fostered many dreams with the cadence of 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 217 


your wistful waltzes and the rapid heat of your fox-trots; 
many eyes have seen before them glimmering futures while you 
beat through their veins with the spell of your syncopation. 

Jazz, how often have you misted the glaring night with 
romance, how often have minds been filled with chivalrous 
fire, with self-told tales of valor in the cause of romance by 
the spell of your syncopation. 

Jazz, tinter of souls, we recognize your imperfections, yet 
we bow before the spell of your syncopation. 


II 


IMPRESSION 
Rippte of beats; pounding hard on that one; gentle under- 
swing of a cloak that swishes; basic frivolity that will not 
calm; alluring twists stick out on top; hear it curl! A 
crimson slide; a greased pole with rectangular bumps; 
bruises that rub one the right way; underneath the grumbling 
of an old man, an old man that enjoys grumbling! “The 
World is Waiting for the Sunrise”; a bang with fraying 
edges rounding a curve at full speed only to find the other 
side like the one before; starched laces becoming soft in 
contact with the throat! A yodel with a turned-up nose; 
out from below the cliff the pulsing cataract, yet it doesn’t 
even ripple! Green leap-frog; a moon with three wisps of 
cloud; “California, Here I Come”’!; Yan, yan Yah-ha-hal! 
A speck against the sky; a majestic sun leaping like a frog; 
a pool with darting fish over gleaming mud! 
Ii] 
YOUNG WHILE THE WORLD IS OLD 

WE TALKED and some joke I made 

Set you laughing, then I was pleased 

That you should think me witty, 

And all the while the jazz band played 

Some pounding leaping tune. You sneezed; 

I said it was a pity 


218 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


That you should have a cold. You smiled; 

It hadn’t killed you yet, you said; 

I quite agreed, seeing you weren’t dead. 

You smiled again and asked if I 

Knew your dear pal, old Betty Wild. 

I didn’t. ‘The sax began again to cry. 

*What’s that they’re playing now? You know it? 
What isthe name? Forgotten? Oh, blow it! 

It doesn’t make any difference anyway. 

It’s jolly though! Let’s dance! What say?” 


IV 


ATMOSPHERE 
THE jazz band plays a lisping tune 
And the sax’s cry turns the air maroon, 
And the stars above must dance with the moon 
And the clouds must swing in time, 
For none can resist the jazzy air 
And the pulses beat to the sax’s blare, 
And the swinging head of the banjo player 
With his plucking strings’ thin chime. 


The polished floor is a rippling lake 

And the mirrored lights are the moon’s bright wake 
Though the dancing feet like gulls’ wings make 

A reiterated whirr. 

And the hair is held by a diadem, 

And the shoe made fast by a flaring gem, 

And they twinkle like rain on a sun-drenched stem 
When the wind makes the spectra stir. 


The dancers move for the moment’s end; 
They have no hope they must ascend, 
No gripping cloud that they must rend 





LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 219 
And find the peak still far; 


For the moment’s swing is the moment’s joy, 
And to-morrow’s prick cannot annoy 

The lilting girl and the laughing boy, 

And the music’s pulsed huzzar. 


A song is sung by the flying feet, 

A song of life, bright, rounded, fleet, 
Where no gray end of drab can meet 
The impetuous and blind, 

And 





JAMES FLEXNER. 


LINCOLN 


WE COULD not use a meaning word, 
Or find a fitting sacrifice, 
That would ring true, if he had heard, 
Who saved us with so high a price. 
The greater tribute paid instead, 
We, silent, left our thoughts unsaid. 
ALINE WECHSLER. 


CONTENT ON A BUS 


T CAN imagine you 

Going home through the spring dusk 
In the blended harmony 

Of distant city sounds; 

And the bus will jerk and rock, 
But you will see 

Only the first star, 

Gold in a green sky; 

And you will be warm, 

Warm with the happiness 
That would be mine— 


Were I there. ZARA MoxHaM. 


220 CREATIVE YOUTH 


LANTERNS 


Ou, smoky lantern, with your unwashed chimney 

As you sway in halting rhythm 

To the jolting of the wagon 

In your lonely, rocking darkness of the night! 
SANDERSON VANDERBILT. 


CHRISTMAS AFTER THANKSGIVING 


THINE is a tree to deck, Lord, to whom thanks we raise, 
Branches that, quivering, stretch full of hope to Thee. 
Yesterday breaking hearts sang loud thy name to praise, 
Counting the little joys, filling their empty days, 

Prayed that their thanks to Thee might truly grateful be. 


Thine is a tree to deck, Lord, who for many lands 

Mixed love with burning hate, gave joy to still the pain, 

For those few golden threads, woven through iron strands, 

They will love life anew, steady their trembling hands. 

Now they have felt the pain; let the tree blaze again! 
KATHARINE KOSMAK 


WHEN I WAS VERY YOUNG 


WuEn I was very young—and knew much more 
Than I do now, a book clasped round with gold 
Once made me wonder what things it could hold 
So precious they must be locked behind a door. 

I wondered, when I opened it, to see 

Only two pictures, and the unknown words 
Covering the pages like the tracks of birds 

Who have paced out of sight majestically. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 


One picture showed a baby on the hay 

And kings and shepherds kneeling on the ground 
With angels singing, and a star on high 
Shedding its light on where the baby lay. 
Another, at the very end I found— 

A man upon a cross against the sky. 


KATHARINE KosMAK. 


EXPLANATIONS 


WueEn the Sky weeps and the Clouds are in tears 
The Stars have a hard time. Poor little dears! 
They have to open their umbrellas wide— 
That’s why we can’t see them from the outside. 


When the Gods get mad and start slamming about, 
The poor timid Moon is in terrible doubt, 

She doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, 
So she flings a black mantle all over the Sky. 


When the Sun is angry and gets awfully hot, 
The Earth is just a Dried Up Spot; 

It is parched and wrinkled and much too warm 
And would eagerly welcome a Hard Rain Storm. 


But the dear little Stars and the poor timid Moon 
(To say nothing of the Dried Up Spot) 

- All feel happy when the Gods are good— 

And it’s not too dreadfully hot. 


221 


Nancy DENNETT. 


CONFESSIONAL 


Two people passed through my woods to-day 
And whispered to my dogwood tree 
Fervently, 

As if they loved to be 

Looking at a tree. 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


He reached to pick a blossom 
Then stuck it in her hair; 
She stroked its pinkness 

But left it there, 

Too beautiful 

To cast away 

Yet too innocent 

To stay, 


Then spoke, low to the tree, 
Loving its purity— 

Fearful to look away 

Lest she might betray 

Her secret. 


He mumbled words 
Incoherent and wild 
Talking to a dogwood 
Like a child 


They turned away 
Forgetting now the tree 
Radiant-eyed 

And free. 


And I, too, went my way 
Knowing it could not be. 
Who ever heard of people 
Speaking with a tree? 
PHILIP JORDAN. 


AH! 
You think to forget me? 
Good. 
A pretty thought | 
Witma ROELOFSMA. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 


PATIENT 


I sHALL leave it all to you; 
Merely to have the pleasure 
Of seeing your deft thin fingers 
Make the paper gray. 


It would be quite useless 

For me to try to work 

The spell that the enchantress Vivien 
Gave to you. It would be unfair— 
As was she. 


For though you are powerful, 

Someday a divining soul 

Will wreck some wonder on your mind. 
I will not hurry the coming of that hour 
Even though I may. 


223 


Eta Fous., 


WELL! 


You begged admittance 
I said, *‘No,” 
And closed the door. 


A moment later 
You climbed through the window 
And sat down. 


WILMA ROELOFSMA. 


VITAL 
FRIEND 
When I am dust 


Consider then our moments 


Of rich friendship. 


CHARLES LIEBMAN, JR. 


224 CREATIVE YOUTH 


SPRIG 
I 


DEEP-ROOTED stands 
the smokestack 

moored to its 

grimy palace of 
industry. 

It will endure 

for years 

for it cannot appreciate 
discontent. 


Il 


Born of 

a slave 

the young smoke 
inflated with 
ambition 

pursues the clouds. 
It is new, powerful 
and free—and— 


is gone. 
SANDERSON VANDERBILT. 
SUCCOUR 
WILL you 


Who have a forest 
Born of myriad suns, 
Help me, 
A fruitless wastrel 
To plant my scentless yucca 
By the sheen of tinsel stars? 
ARTHUR BULLOWA. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 


A BALLAD OF LADY MOON 


SMILE, Lady Moon, through your vapor of white, 
Smile, though your beauty last only to-night, 
Shadow the meadows with radiant light, 

Smile, Lady Moon. 


Across the hills, now faintly gray, 
There moves a mass of sheeted men, 
Whose ghastly errand, ere the day, 
Shall be repeated once again. 


They hold a man, with stoic calm 

And gallant smile he hides his care; 
They bind him to a lone tree’s arm, 
And watch hin, frantic, hopeless, there. 


With Indian stealth and indrawn breath 

They disappear behind a hill; 

The figure, vanquished now by Death, 

In weird contortion, hangs there . . ._ still. 


Hide, Lady Moon, ’neath your sheathing of white, 


Hide from all humans their fellow-man’s plight, 
Use as a curtain the jet of the night, 
Hide, Lady Moon. 


228 


ALINE WECHSLER. 


UAE eHIEESs 
Ir You are going to scold me 
For the little ills I do, 
Scold me, and scold me quickly, 
For I am leaving you. 


226 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


I’m leaving for my mountains 
That lift their crests on high 
Where I can climb their summits 

And watch the eagles fly. 


Upon the last long foothill’s slope 
T’ll turn and wave and smile; 
Then I’ll forget among the hills, 
And you may watch awhile. 
| WILLIAM SARGENT. 


THE DARK HOURS OF THE NIGHT 


WHEN I cross a stone-flagged alley 

Of a little street hemmed in by two fences, 
Save only where two doors lead back into my 
Cell— 

That is now to me, who have really lived, 
My short moment of life. 


I have loved the wind and the hills, 
The sea breaking on white cliffs, 
And I have laughed for 
the joy of laughing, 

Then next have cried, 

because, 
For a little, I was left out of beauty 
And thrown into memory. 
But now—all day long I stay in a house, 
Or walk for one hour between long rows 
Of stores 
On a dead street 
In a dead city 


And I am like the others who 
| | walk with me— 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 227 


Feelingless. 
I may not even cry. 
(But I thank God that He 
Has taken from me 
The power to feel swift frightening pain; 
I am left now with only the memory of hurt) 
But, as a dream may come to life 
During the dark hours of the night, 
So for just the time 
It takes to cross that little alley— 
T may live. 
ZARA MoxuHamM. 


FOOL 


In one black moment 
I wrung life from my body 
And gave it to you 


You 
You turned your head aside 
To laugh. 
WILMA ROELOFSMA. 


QUEEN OF THE POND 


Two swollen, distorted frogs 

Squat beside the waterlily; 

She holds them there on either side— 
Two slow-blooded, pulseless beasts. 

The gay bright-colored turtle she rejects, 
She cares not for the lofty crane, 

She spurns the rainbow-tinted sunfish. 
All these 

And more 

This queen of flowers 


228 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


Neglects. 

Two swollen, distorted frogs 
Lie there 

Motionless and hideous 
Still. 


SANDERSON VANDERBILT. 


VENDETTA 


To BLEED him slowly;. 
With frozen words 
Inserting in his open wound of penitence 
The venom 
Of complete indifference; 
Then not to care enough to watch him writhe. 
ZorA Heap. 


WIND-WOLVES 


Do you hear the cry as the pack goes by 
The wind-wolves hunting across the sky? 
Hear them tongue it, keen and clear, 
Hot on the flanks of the flying deer? 


Across the forest, mere, and plain, 
Their hunting howl goes up again. 

All night they’ll follow the ghostly trail 
All night we’ll hear the phantom wail. 


For to-night the wind-wolf pack holds sway 
From Pegasus Square to the Milky Way 
And the frightened bands of cloud deer flee 
In scattered bands of two and three. 
WILLIAM SARGENT. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 229 


NOW 


I aM the Present. 
I am the Everlasting Now. 


I am the only thing that is alive. 

I have seen all things that ever were, 

But all of them died when I left. 

Because I passed by, Cleopatra is rotting; 

Alexander and Czsar stopped their conquests when I left 
them; 

As I walk away, empires crumble. 

When I am gone, nothing can live; 

Yet I will stop for no one. 


Some day I will say good-bye to you, 
And you will perish. 


I carry with me the spoils of all the ages, 

The ages which are dead because I am not with them. 

I have stolen the fruits of everyone’s labor to take along. 
But I will not give them to you to keep. 

Instead, I will despoil you 

And carry the sum of all with me. 


Wherever I go I will continue to pillage. 
I do not know when I shall stop, 
Any more than I know when I began. 


When the Future comes, it will be I. 
I am the Present. 


I am the Everlasting Now. 
Artuur E. Bestor, Jr. 


230 


CREATIVE YOUTH 


THE FOUR-MASTER 


THEY say that you came from St. Joe 
That you took three weeks to come 
But I know 

Where you are from. 


They say that you carried white pine 
Full to the poop-rail 

Stacked on deck, line on line; 

That you lost a studding sail. 


But they are wrong: 

[ know 

You came the Nebulz along 
And carry moon-snow 


The sea you crossed 
Was a far star’s light 
And the sail you lost 
Was the wig of the night. 
Putte JORDAN. 


BEYOND 
Wuat is more awful than a door? 
Doors are opaque; one cannot see through them. 
One can only hear, and imagine—and dread. 


“Come,” you say, “‘it is not so bad as that!” 


But put your eye to the keyhole. 
All you see is pressed in the mold of the keyhole: 
Its shape leads you astray. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 231 


“T see perfectly, plainly; 
I see the leg of a chair, and a little 
Pool of light: there must be a lamp above.” 


What color is the lamp? Crimson? . . . You do not 
know! 

What is in that shadow? 

What is it the shadow of? . . . You cannot see! 


The side of the keyhole obscures! 
“But,” you say, “‘one can listen.” 


Come closer. Place your ear hard against the painted wood; 
Press your ear until it becomes warm; and listen. 

“Yes, I believe it to be true,” a gruff voice says. 

“It’s a lie!”’ says another. 

That’s all you hear; 

They always contradict each other on that side of the door! 


Let me tell you something: you and | 
Who have never been there, 
Know more about that room than its inhabitants; 
They are not sure of anything, but we know 
That there is the leg of a chair with a lamp above, 
And that they contradict each other. 
James FLEXNER. 


HEAVEN 


I wenT to church one day, and God sat by my side, 

And we laughed at the preacher and the people with their 
prayer books 

Saying prayers to a God so far away. 

‘Heaven is pearl-paved,” said the preacher, ‘“‘and gold, 

And the angels sing His praises on their harps. 

It is there that you and I will some day go.” 


232 CREATIVE YOUTH 
And God laughed and said to me, 


*‘Heaven is a broad field and a brook, 
And the lean, scarred, beaten horse 
And the houseless cur and the hunted deer 
Will go there with Me.” 
ANNE PAPPENHEIMER. 


TWO SONNETS ON THE THEATRE 
I 


BETWEEN the wings some watch for spotlight moons 
In whose pale flood they sing their madrigal; 
Grotesquely solemn wait the old buffoons 

To caper in the mimic carnival; 

A warbling chorus makes its blithe advent 

To chirp of gardens painted on the props! 

While I await the glittering descent 

Of seven iridescent golden drops. 


The Sacred Stage-hands smile! But who can tell 
Whether they be benignly satisfied 

To see us all attend our cues so well, 

Or if they hold a smile that would deride 

Our dogged faitnfulness? And then again, 

They may be God’s impassive Union men! 


I] 


You need not think that I am unaware 

Of that abysmal void . . . the darkened pit 
Where Holy Critics with their notebooks sit, 
Although prevented by the footlights’ glare 
From actually seeing what is there. 

Why probe the audience? What matters it 

If they be ghosts or gods? Who cares a whit! 
No conscientious actor stoops to stare. 


LINCOLN SCHOOL VERSE, 1923-1925 233 


Nor will I, when the curtain has been drawn, 

The costume and the make-up clay removed 

And packed within the trunk, recall my part, 

Or rush to buy the Eden News at dawn 

To read there if the Critics all approved. 

Their favor may be sweet. . . . I bow to Art! 
Tom PRIDEAUX. 


PRAYER 


Tue hand that burns to hold the pen, the mind 

That longs to frame with silver all it sees, 

The straining youthful eyes that seem to find 

Behind each puffy cloud Hesperides, 

Oh, calming Cynicism, gather these 

Into your chill when shams have ceased to blind. 
JAMES FLEXNER. 


HORIZONTAL 


A DRAGON FLY, if you be noting, 
Holds horizontal in his flight, 
And lily-pads are always floating 

Like trays of carven malachite; 


Though I may ship to Buenos Aires 
Or scale the canyons of the West, 
Or watch the polar luminaries, 
Or travel East to Budapest, 


T’ll not degrade me to the Devil, 
Nor join Jove’s majesty on high, 
But keep the horizontal level 
Of lily-pad and dragonfly. 
Tom PripEAux. 


234 CREATIVE YOUTH 


SO LONG 


I aM alien to all that you call yours, my friend, 
So I must leave. 

Close the door gently behind my back, 

And return to your desk; 

Work on with wrinkled eyebrows . . . 

I will go out by paths I do not know 

Away from you; 

And I shall not look back, 

For I shall be afraid. 


They are too sure, those gods of yours .+. «- 
I, who am a weather vane, 
Must leave your windless room. 
Close the door gently behind my back \ 
And resume your thoughts; 
But, first, turn the key— 
For I shall be afraid. 
JAMES FLEXNER. 


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